THE 
STRANGE 

WAYS 

OF 

GOD 

BROWN 


9Ee  Stmnqe 
of /od 

Charles  9(eynolds  <<Brown 


DR.  CHARLES  R.  BROWN  believes  that 
the  teachings  of  the  Book  of  Job  have 
special  value  for  our  times,  for  it  deals 
with  the  vital  problems  of  ordinary  people. 
He  aims,  therefore,  to  interest  the  average 
reader,  who  is  less  concerned  with  dogmas 
and  speculative  inquiries  than  with  the 
stress  and  strain  of  actual  experience,  and 
to  clarify  the  complications  of  form  in 
this  ancient  drama.  The  result  is  a  pop- 
ular and  concise  study,  written  in  Dr. 
Brown's  crisp,  forceful  English,  and  with 
an  understanding  of  the  deeper  processes 
of  mind  and  heart  common  to  men  of 
to-day  as  to  Job  of  old. 


THE  STRANGE  WAYS  OF  GOD 


Other  Books  by  Charles  Reynolds  Brown 

THE  MAIN  POINTS  :  A  Study  in  Christian  Belief 
THE  SOCIAL  MESSAGE  or  THE  MODERN  PULPIT 
Two  PARABLES 
THE  GOSPEL  OF  GOOD  HEALTH 


THE 


STRANGE  WAYS  OF  GOD 


A  Study  in  the  Book  of  Job 


BY 


CHARLES  REYNOLDS  BROWN 


1  /  had  heard  of  thee  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear  ; 
But  now  mine  eye  teeth  thee." 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 

X££i 

BOSTON 
THE    PILGRIM    PRESS 

NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 

1908 


BELCHER 


COPYRIGHT  1908 
CHARLES  REYNOLDS  BROWN 


THE   UNIVERSITY   PRESS,    CAMBRIDGE,    U.S.A. 


UNIVERSITY 


PREFACE 

THIS  little  book  is  not  in  any  sense  a  commentary 
upon  or  a  critical  exposition  of  the  book  of  Job.  The 
larger  part  of  the  material  was  originally  used  in  a 
series  of  lectures  intended  for  a  popular  audience  and 
designed  to  increase  the  interest  in,  and  to  aid  in  a 
better  understanding  of  this  ancient  poem. 

The  literary  quality  of  the  book  of  Job  is  such  as 
to  give  it  a  high  place  among  the  world's  master- 
pieces, but  the  many  faulty  translations  in  the  Au- 
thorized Version,  the  ill-considered  arrangement  of 
the  parts  of  the  poem  as  to  their  literary  form  in 
an  ordinary  copy  of  the  Scriptures,  and  a  wide- 
spread misconception  as  to  the  main  purpose  of  the 
argument,  have  tended  to  obscure  its  beauty. 

In  the  main  I  have  used  the  translation  given  in 
the  Revised  Version  and  the  literary  arrangement 
found  in  Moulton's  Modern  Reader's  Bible.  Here 
and  there,  however,  I  have  used  my  own  paraphrase 
where  it  seemed  to  me  the  essential  meaning  could 
be  more  clearly  rendered.  I  have  occasionally  quoted 
together  lines  which  stand  apart  in  the  text,  without 
the  insertion  of  the  customary  marks,  but  in  this 
I  am  sure  no  violence  has  been  done  at  any  point  to 
the  author's  meaning,  nor  has  the  essential  course 
of  his  argument  been  in  any  wise  disturbed. 

I  freely  confess  my  indebtedness  to  Prof.  John  F. 
Genung's  The  Epic  of  the  Inner  Life,  as  well  as  to 

[v] 


173957 


PREFACE 

Watson's  volume  on  Job,  and  to  Davidson's  Job  in 
the  Cambridge  Bible. 

I  have  written  these  pages  in  the  hope  that  they 
might  increase  the  interest  of  all  lovers  of  good  lit- 
erature in  the  frequently  neglected  poem,  and  aid 
in  bringing  out  more  clearly  its  teachings,  which  in 
my  judgment  have  special  value  for  the  times  on 
which  we  have  fallen. 


[vi] 


Contents 


PAGE 

I.   THE  POINT  OF  VIEW 1 

II.   THE  SHOCK  OF  UNEXPLAINED  ADVERSITY  .  6 

III.  THE  FAILURE  OF  CONVENTIONAL  ORTHODOXY  17 

IV.  THE  SPIRITUAL   ENERGY  OF  A  PERPLEXED 

MAN 31 

V.   THE  ANSWER  FROM  THE  CLOUDS  ....  47 

VI.   THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NEW  FAITH      .     .  62 


/         OF 

(   UNIVERSITY  ) 

V  OF 


V  r 


The 

Strange  Ways  of  God 

•*> 

I.    THE  POINT   OF  VIEW 


HE  book  of  Job  has  stood  for  genera- 
tions as  one  of  the  great  dramas  of 
doubt.  The  quality  and  source  of  the 
doubt  give  the  book  special  interest  to 
practical  minds  in  that  it  takes  up,  not 
those  speculative  inquiries  which  are  spun  out  by 
cloistered  schoolmen  sitting  comfortably  apart  from 
the  strain  and  stress  of  actual  experience,  but  rather 
the  vital  problems  of  ordinary  people.  The  prevail- 
ing faith  of  the  day  is  challenged  by  the  hard  lot 
which  fell  to  a  flesh-and-blood  man.  We  find  a  cer- 
tain man  of  unblemished  integrity  in  the  full  enjoy- 
ment of  health,  property,  family  joy,  and  a  life  of 
kindly  usefulness,  brought  to  the  point  where  he  feels 
the  foundations  slipping  from  under  him  because  of 
terrible  misfortunes  which  the  God  of  righteousness 
allows  to  fall  upon  his  home  of  peace.  It  is,  therefore, 
not  a  clever  contest  between  two  hair-splitting  theo- 
ries, but  the  battle  of  warm  faith  with  hard  facts,  that 
we  find  portrayed  in  the  book  of  Job. 

It  is  at  this  very  point  that  the  busy  people  of  the 
world  to-day  most  commonly  find  themselves  puzzled. 
In  their  minds  the  real  debate  is  not  over  the  fine 
points  of  this  particular  dogma  or  of  that;  it  deals 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

with  something  more  fundamental  and  vital.  They 
listen  on  Sunday  to  the  warm  assurances  of  faith  put 
forth  from  the  pulpits  of  the  land, — a  God  who  knows 
that  we  have  need  of  all  the  things  that  are  demanded 
for  joyous  and  useful  existence ;  a  Friend  who  does 
not  suffer  a  sparrow  to  fall  to  the  ground  without  his 
notice ;  a  Father  who  is  more  ready  to  hear  and  an- 
swer the  prayerful  appeals  of  his  people  than  earthly 
fathers  are  to  give  bread  to  their  children;  an  All- 
embracing  Providence  whose  affectionate  interest  in 
our  well-being  counts  the  very  hairs  of  our  heads ! 
Then  on  Monday  morning  they  go  out  into  the  world 
—  not  some  imaginary  world  as  men  have  agreed 
together  to  picture  it  to  themselves,  but  the  real  world 
as  it  is.  They  rub  against  the  unplaned  side  of  it 
and  find  it  rough,  full  of  knots  and  splinters.  They 
are  torn  and  bruised  by  the  contact;  or,  if  happily 
they  themselves  escape  for  a  time,  they  painfully  wit- 
ness the  discomfiture  of  their  less  fortunate  fellows. 
They  ponder  the  apparent  discrepancies  between  the 
theories  of  the  pulpit  and  the  facts  which  face  them. 
It  need  not  be  said  that  in  general  they  hold  firmly 
to  the  facts  while  oftentimes  their  faith  in  the  theories 
slips  entirely  away.  All  such  serious,  observant,  puz- 
zled, and  frankly  rational  men  will  be  interested  in 
those  pages  of  Hebrew  literature,  where  the  same  old 
battle  of  belief  was  fought  out  in  the  land  of  Uz. 

This  book  is  commonly  regarded,  not  as  literal  his- 
tory, but  as  a  dramatic  poem.  There  may  have  been 
some  historical  basis  for  the  story,  as  there  was  for 
the  plays  of  Hamlet  and  Macbeth.  Two  writers  of 
Scripture,  Ezekiel  and  James,  refer  in  passing  to  a 

[2] 


THE    POINT    OF    VIEW 


man  named  "Job."  Some  good  man  bearing  that 
name  may  indeed  have  suffered  extraordinary  mis- 
fortune, but  the  treatment  of  the  material  is  literary, 
poetic,  dramatic.  In  the  four  great  calamities  which 
fell  upon  the  hero  of  the  story,  one  servant,  and  only 
one  escaped  on  each  occasion  to  report  the  event. 
The  occurrences  of  actual  life  do  not  commonly 
repeat  themselves  with  such  mathematical  exact- 
ness. When  Job  regained  his  property  he  had  ex- 
actly twice  as  many  sheep,  oxen,  camels,  and  asses 
as  before  his  misfortunes.  In  the  second  family  he 
reared,  he  had  exactly  the  same  number  of  children 
as  in  the  first,  and  the  sexes  were  in  precisely  the  same 
proportion,  seven  sons  and  three  daughters,  an  ar- 
rangement highly  acceptable  to  the  Oriental  heart. 
All  this  is  good  literary  form,  but  in  the  regaining  of 
property,  and  in  the  rearing  of  a  second  family,  actual 
history  does  not  usually  follow  so  strictly  an  arith- 
metical plan  in  order  to  reach  a  striking  climax.  All 
these  items  have  the  artificial  look  which  belongs  to 
the  deliberate  arrangement  of  materials  for  dramatic 
effect. 

This  book,  like  Proverbs  and  Ecclesiastes,  belongs 
to  what  is  called  the  "Wisdom  Literature"  of  the 
Bible,  which  stands  as  the  nearest  approach  made  by 
the  Hebrews  to  a  moral  philosophy  such  as  we  find 
among  the  Greeks  and  in  modern  nations.  The  wis- 
dom literature  in  its  method  and  spirit  lies  quite  apart 
from  the  Law  and  the  Prophets.  In  this  book  of  Job 
no  appeal  is  made  to  the  Law  of  Moses,  nor  is  there 
any  "Thus  saith  the  Lord"  of  the  prophet.  No 
mention  is  made  of  any  of  the  sacred  writings  of  the 

[3] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 


Hebrews,  although  many  of  them  were  current  when 
the  book  of  Job  was  written.  No  reference  is  made 
in  the  argument  to  the  annals  of  Hebrew  history  — 
the  tradition  of  the  deluge,  the  destruction  of  the 
cities  of  the  Plain,  the  plagues  of  Egypt,  or  the  de- 
liverance from  bondage,  which  were  supposed  to 
exhibit  and  illustrate  the  dealings  of  God  with  men. 
The  discussion  is  carried  on  entirely  apart  from  law 
or  prophecy,  purely  in  the  light  of  moral  reason. 
The  authors  of  this  Wisdom  Literature  fell  back 
upon  experience  and  upon  those  considerations  which 
the  universal  moral  judgment  tends  to  recognize  and 
approve.  They  were  really  "the  Humanists  of  the 
Bible." 

The  discussion  is  not  carried  on  in  the  Temple,  nor 
in  the  halls  of  learning,  but  out  in  the  open  air.  The 
ash-heap  or  dumping-ground  outside  the  city,  where 
Job's  leprosy  compelled  him  to  go,  became  the  scene 
of  the  debate.  The  background  or  setting  of  the 
drama  is  therefore  that  of  external  nature.  The  fur- 
nishings of  the  Temple,  the  ritualism  of  the  priests, 
the  well-worn  copies  of  the  sacred  manuscripts  used 
by  the  scribes,  are  nowhere  in  sight.  Out  under  the 
broad  sky  we  see  the  robber  bands  hovering  on  the 
edges  of  prosperous  society  and  making  their  attack 
upon  Job's  flocks.  We  see  the  lightning  destroying 
his  sheep,  the  cyclone  destroying  his  house,  thus  kill- 
ing all  his  children.  We  see  gathering  upon  the  hori- 
zon the  second  mighty  storm  out  of  whose  whirlwind 
the  voice  of  Jehovah  speaks.  The  argument  through- 
out is  carried  on  apart  from  any  light  cast  by  the 
special  experiences  of  the  Hebrew  people  as  recorded 

[4] 


THE    POINT    OF    VIEW 


in  their  Scriptures;  the  point  of  view  is  that  of  the 
outdoor  life  which  seeks  to  interpret  the  ways  of 
God  by  ordinary  human  experience,  and  by  the 
cosmic  processes  which  enfold  it. 

The  Hebrew  race  developed  no  theater  as  did  the 
Greeks  and  other  ancient  races.  To  this  day,  in  the 
city  of  Jerusalem  there  is  no  theater,  public  hall,  or 
other  places  of  general  amusement,  although  it  is  a 
city  of  more  than  fifty  thousand  inhabitants.  The 
major  study  of  the  Hebrews  was  religion  —  the  being 
of  God,  the  unseen  spiritual  order,  the  fortunes  and 
destiny  of  the  soul.  The  book  of  Job  therefore  lacks 
many  of  the  features  that  we  ordinarily  associate  with 
dramatic  presentation.  Aside  from  a  brief  prologue, 
and  a  still  briefer  epilogue,  it  is  simply  a  debate  be- 
tween five  men,  concluded  by  an  utterance  from  a 
supernatural  voice  which  issued  out  of  a  whirlwind. 
The  usual  action  and  stage  play  are  entirely  wanting 
in  that  portion,  which  forms  nine- tenths  of  the  book. 
All  this  is  in  harmony  with  the  Hebrew  habit  of 
mind.  For  them  the  great  scene  of  action  was  within 
the  soul,  where  men  wrestled  with  the  everlasting 
mystery  of  undeserved  suffering  in  a  world  profess- 
edly ruled  by  justice  and  benevolence.  The  book 
of  Job  has  well  been  called  "The  Epic  of  the  Inner 
Life,"  for  the  scene  of  action  lies  in  those  deeper 
processes  of  mind  and  heart  as  they  engage  with  the 
problem  of  religious  faith. 


H.  THE  SHOCK  OF  UNEXPLAINED 
ADVERSITY 


HE  story  opens  with  a  charming  pic- 
ture of  the  piety  and  the  prosperity  of 
the  hero.  These  two  facts  are  named 
together,  for  according  to  the  earlier 
conviction  of  the  Hebrew  they  were 
inevitably  associated  as  cause  and  effect.  The  whole 
message  of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  which  stands 
as  a  kind  of  resume  of  the  position  of  Hebrew  faith 
up  to  the  time  of  Josiah  and  beyond,  is  summed  up 
in  these  words:  "Keep  therefore  the  words  of  this 
covenant,  and  do  them,  that  ye  may  prosper  in  all 
that  ye  do."  Men  who  served  God  were  encouraged 
to  believe  that  health  and  riches,  family  happiness, 
and  a  peaceful  old  age,  would  inevitably  fall  to 
their  lot. 

This  gracious  promise  does,  indeed,  point  toward 
a  certain  truth,  but  not  toward  all  the  truth.  It  is  a 
broad  generalization  which  does  not  provide  for  all 
phases  of  human  experience,  and  it  leaves  unpro- 
tected the  weak  spot  in  the  Old  Testament  theology, 
the  question  of  motive.  But  that  weak  spot  had  not 
been  discovered  by  Job  or  by  his  friends,  and  there- 
fore his  piety  and  his  prosperity  are  brought  before 
us  as  natural  parts  of  one  harmonious  whole. 

It  is  indeed  a  lovely  picture  !  There  was  a  man  in 
the  land  of  Uz,  whose  name  was  Job,  a  sound, 
straight,  God-f earing,  and  evil-hating  man.  He  was 

[6] 


UNEXPLAINED    ADVERSITY 

the  richest  of  all  the  sons  of  the  East,  as  we  see  in  the 
author's  inventory  of  Job's  property.  He  rejoiced  in 
ten  children,  seven  of  them  —  "  Blessed  be  the  name 
of  the  Lord,"  he  would  have  said  —  being  sons.  He 
practised  a  simple,  unaffected  piety,  and  as  a  true 
patriarch  exercised  a  certain  priesthood  on  behalf  of 
his  family.  "They  are  good  children,"  he  seemed 
to  say,  "but  in  their  feasting"  (in  that  joyous  social 
life  which  belongs  to  youth)  "it  may  be  that  they 
have  forgotten  God  and  sinned  in  their  hearts."  So 
he  rose  up  early  in  the  morning,  and  after  the  cus- 
tom of  the  time,  offered  burnt-offerings  according  to 
the  number  of  them  all,  and  sanctified  them  by  the 
atmosphere  of  devotion  he  maintained  in  his  home. 
"Thus  did  Job  continually,"  the  author  says  as  he 
finishes  his  picture,  for  worthy  conduct  was  not  some- 
thing to  which  his  hero  occasionally  turned  aside  in 
a  spurt  of  devotion  —  the  habit  of  his  life  was  right- 
eousness, godliness,  usefulness. 

Is  there  in  literature  a  finer  portrayal  of  noble 
character  than  in  this  passage  where  Job  calls  upon 
his  acquaintances  to  bear  witness  to  the  life  he  has 
lived,  or  to  bring  accusation  against  him  if  they  can  ? 

"I  put  on  righteousness  and  it  clothed  itself  with  me! 
I  was  eyes  to  the  blind,  feet  to  the  lame, 
And  a  father  to  the  needy. 
I  delivered  the  poor  when  he  cried, 
The  orphan  and  him  that  had  no  helper; 
And  the  cause  that  I  knew  not,  I  searched  out. 

"If  I  have  walked  in  vanity 
Or  my  foot  has  hasted  to  deceit; 

[7] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

If  my  step  has  turned  out  of  the  way 

Or  if  any  spot  has  cleaved  to  my  hands; 

If  I  despised  the  cause  of  my  man  servant 

Or  my  maid  servant  when  they  contended  with  me; 

If  I  rejoiced  because  my  wealth  was  great, 

Or  if  mine  heart  has  been  enticed  by  a  woman; 

If  I  have  withheld  the  poor  from  their  desire 

Or  have  caused  the  eyes  of  the  widow  to  fail, 

Then  let  my  shoulder  fall  from  my  shoulder  blade 

And  mine  arm  be  broken  from  the  bone ! 

Let  me  be  weighed  in  an  even  balance, 

That  God  may  know  mine  integrity." 

And  this  noble  picture  drawn  by  the  author  as 
Job's  challenge  to  his  accusers  is  further  confirmed 
by  supernatural  testimony.  The  voice  from  heaven 
challenges  the  world: 

"Hast  thou  considered  my  servant  Job? 
That  there  is  none  like  him  in  the  earth, 
A  sound,  straight,  God-fearing,  evil-hating  man  ? " 

This  corroborative  testimony  as  to  the  genuineness 
of  his  piety  is  brought  before  us  in  advance,  to  the 
end  that  when  suffering,  severe  and  unprecedented, 
falls  upon  him,  we  may  know  how  undeserved  it  is. 
Here  stands  this  good  man  in  the  enjoyment  of  such 
health  and  property,  family  joy,  and  universal  esteem, 
as  would  appropriately  belong  to  one  whose  piety  was 
so  deep  and  real. 

We  then  come  to  an  account  of  the  trial  decided 
upon  in  heaven.  The  author  allows  his  readers  to 
see  what  Job  and  his  friends  did  not  see.  We  look 
into  an  upper  region  where  certain  transactions  and 

JTj 


UNEXPLAINED    ADVERSITY 

determinations  affecting  mortal  men  were  taking 
shape,  but  of  which  these  people  on  earth  were  as 
yet  all  unaware.  There  was  a  day  when  the  sons  of 
God,  the  servants  and  agents  of  the  divine  purpose 
in  the  moral  administration  of  the  world,  came  to 
present  themselves  before  the  Lord.  The  "Adver- 
sary" came  also  among  them.  The  literary  associ- 
ations of  the  word  "Satan,"  largely  through  the  use 
of  it  in  Milton's  Paradise  Lost,  have  carried  it  far 
from  the  meaning  of  the  original  term  here  used  by 
the  author.  The  "Adversary"  was  not  a  fallen  being 
full  of  malignity,  hatefully  opposing  himself  to  the 
Divine  Will.  He  was  one  of  "the  sons  of  God," 
dutifully  presenting  himself  with  the  others.  He 
was  the  cautious,  critical,  discriminating  member  of 
the  cabinet.  He  held  the  office  of  "Advocatus  Dia- 
boli,"  the  one  employed  of  old  by  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic Church  when  the  question  of  canonizing  a  saint 
came  up,  to  critically  weigh,  test,  and  scrutinize  the 
candidate,  lest  some  flaw  which  would  unfit  him  for 
sainthood  might  perchance  be  overlooked.  The 
"Adversary"  was,  therefore,  a  trusted  Inspector  with 
good  standing  and  a  place  of  usefulness  among  the 
sons  of  God. 

This  official  has  been  going  to  and  fro  in  the  earth, 
critically  studying  the  moral  processes  at  work,  and 
scrutinizing  the  results  attained.  On  his  return, 
the  Lord  of  moral  values  offers  the  customary  chal- 
lenge, "Hast  thou  considered  my  servant  Job  that 
there  is  none  like  him  in  the  earth?"  Then  the 
cautious  Inspector,  whose  office  it  is  to  see  that  the 
moral  administration  of  the  universe  is  not  imposed 

[9] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

upon,  fixes  upon  that  weak  spot  in  Old  Testament 
piety,  the  question  of  motive.  He  expresses  his 
doubt  as  to  the  possibility  of  disinterested  good- 
ness under  the  system  of  rewards  believed  in  by  the 
ethical  leaders  of  that  day.  "Doth  Job  fear  God  for 
nought?"  he  replies.  "Is  he  not  well  paid  for  it; 
and  may  it  not  be  that  he  is  doing  it  for  pay?" 
"Hast  not  thou  made  an  hedge  about  him,  .  .  . 
and  about  all  that  he  hath?  His  work  is  blessed, 
his  substance  is  increased,  and  his  loved  ones  are 
all  about  him.  But  put  forth  thine  hand  now,  and 
touch  all  that  he  hath,  and  he  will  curse  thee  to  thy 
face." 

Here  was  the  tender  spot !  The  prevailing  senti- 
ment of  the  period  was  that  righteousness  would 
bring  health,  riches,  long  life,  and  family  joy;  if 
these  failed  then  faith  faltered.  How  often  did 
Hebrew  faith  perish  utterly  in  the  face  of  adversity ! 
When  the  Hebrew  capital  was  taken  by  the  enemy, 
and  the  Jews  were  carried  off  into  Babylonian  cap- 
tivity, it  meant  an  end  of  everything  to  many  a  soul ; 
only  a  remnant  ever  cared  to  return  and  to  resume 
their  historic  cult.  Only  a  few  rare  spirits  like  Jere- 
miah and  the  author  of  the  second  part  of  Isaiah 
could  see  that  One  apparently  despised  and  rejected 
by  the  march  of  events,  a  man  of  sorrows  and  ac- 
quainted with  grief,  might  be  fulfilling  a  higher 
moral  function  through  his  vicarious  suffering,  than 
those  who  lived  on  happily  in  the  full  tide  of  pros- 
perity. And  in  the  time  of  Christ,  Peter,  steeped  in 
Judaism,  voiced  the  same  feeling  when  he  said,  in 
effect,  to  his  Master,  "We  are  all  good  men ;  we  have 

[10] 


UNEXPLAINED   ADVERSITY 

forsaken  all  and  followed  thee;  we  are  clearly  en- 
titled to  great  reward ;  what  shall  we  have  therefore  ?  " 

Do  men  serve  God  for  naught?  Are  they  right- 
eous apart  from  the  consideration  of  the  pay  in- 
volved? It  is  certain  that  many  of  the  Hebrews 
were  not;  their  eye  was  on  the  pay.  "If  God  will 
be  with  me,  and  will  keep  me  in  this  way  that  I  go, 
and  will  give  me  bread  to  eat,  and  raiment  to  put  on, 
so  that  I  come  again  to  my  father's  house  in  peace, 
then  shall  the  Lord  be  my  God  " —  thus  spoke  the  He- 
brew patriarch  of  old !  The  disposition  to  have  the 
terms  and  conditions  of  conscientious  living  all  ar- 
ranged in  advance  was  widely  prevalent  in  the  He- 
brew religion.  The  Adversary  fixes  upon  the  weak 
spot  in  the  theological  system  of  that  period,  and  the 
author  with  genuine  insight  thus  attacks  the  current 
orthodoxy  of  his  day  from  the  very  side  where  it 
finally  broke  down. 

The  trial  is  therefore  decided  upon  in  heaven  as 
a  necessary  part  of  the  moral  administration  of  the 
world.  The  Adversary  is  given  permission  to  take 
away,  by  a  series  of  calamities,  all  of  Job's  property, 
his  children  and  his  health;  and  with  these  would 
inevitably  go  the  esteem  and  confidence  of  his  friends, 
who,  by  the  demands  of  their  system,  would  be 
forced  to  conclude  that  such  extraordinary  misfor- 
tune pointed  to  some  secret  evil  in  his  life.  And 
this  would  inevitably  raise  the  question  in  Job's 
mind,  as  adversity  has  raised  it  in  the  minds  of 
countless  thousands,  whether  or  no  we  can  trust 
God,  whether  we  can  continue  to  believe  in  his 
justice  and  benevolence.  Job  did  not  know  of  the 

[in 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

trial  decided  upon  in  the  unseen  world,  as  we  our- 
selves know  not  the  purport  of  much  of  the  suffer- 
ing that  falls  suddenly  and  terribly  into  our  own 
lives;  the  very  incompleteness  of  his  knowledge 
would  thus  add  to  the  confusion  of  his  faith  in  the 
presence  of  disaster  so  wide-spread. 

And  the  other  question  would  also  be  raised,  — 
Can  God  trust  men?  Are  men  righteous  for  pay, 
or  do  they  serve  God  because  it  is  right?  Is  there 
a  righteousness  that  turns  to  God  as  the  needle  to 
the  pole,  regardless  of  outward  circumstances,  of 
comfort  or  discomfort,  of  happiness  or  misery? 
Both  these  questions  would  come  into  the  great  de- 
bate, "Can  men  trust  God?"  "Can  God  trust 
men?"  The  severest  trial  would  indeed  be  war- 
ranted if  some  satisfactory  answer  to  these  funda- 
mental inquiries  might  result.  Permission  is  there- 
fore given  for  such  a  trial.  The  Lord  said  to  the 
Adversary,  He  is  in  thine  hand;  only  save  his  life. 
And  the  Adversary  went  forth  from  the  presence  of 
the  Lord. 

We  come  next  to  the  scene  where  the  trial  is  in- 
flicted. This  too  is  a  dramatic  picture.  Job  was 
in  the  city,  sitting,  as  he  was  wont,  at  the  public  gate 
in  friendly  converse  with  those  who  held  him  in  high 
esteem.  His  heart  was  full  of  that  sweet  content 
which  clothes  the  man  who  is  healthy,  prosperous, 
happy,  and  useful.  Suddenly  one  of  his  servants 
came  running  in,  out  of  breath,  trembling  with  the 
evil  news  he  brought.  "The  Sabeans  fell  upon  the 
oxen  and  the  asses,"  he  cried,  "and  carried  them 
away;  and  the  servants  are  slain  with  the  edge  of 

[12] 


UNEXPLAINED    ADVERSITY 

the  sword,  and  I  only  am  escaped  alone  to  tell  thee." 
Before  he  had  finished,  another  servant  came  run- 
ning in,  shouting,  "The  Chaldeans,  three  bands  of 
them,  fell  upon  the  camels;  and  the  servants  are 
slain,  and  I  only  am  escaped  alone  to  tell  thee." 
While  he  was  yet  speaking  another  came  hurrying 
up,  and  cried,  "The  fire  of  God  is  fallen  from 
heaven  and  hath  burned  up  the  sheep  and  the  ser- 
vants and  consumed  them ;  and  I  only  am  escaped 
alone  to  tell  thee."  And  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye 
yet  another  servant,  paler  than  the  rest  and  more 
excited,  came  with  his  direful  story:  "Thy  sons 
and  thy  daughters  were  eating  and  drinking  wine 
in  their  eldest  brother's  house;  and  behold  there 
came  a  great  wind  from  the  wilderness  and  smote 
the  four  corners  of  the  house  and  it  fell  upon  the 
young  men,  and  they  are  dead;  and  I  only  am 
escaped  alone  to  tell  thee." 

Smitten  he  was  by  these  terrible  reports,  but  he 
bravely  steadied  himself  like  a  Sequoia  in  the  face 
of  a  storm !  He  stood  and  rent  his  garments  as 
Orientals  do  in  time  of  sore  distress.  He  bowed  him- 
self before  the  Lord  and  prayed,  "Naked  came  I 
out  of  my  mother's  womb,  and  naked  shall  I  re- 
turn ! "  Property  gone,  children  all  dead,  his  own 
bare  manhood  seemed  to  be  all  that  was  left !  And 
presently  he  added,  "The  Lord  gave,  and  the  Lord 
hath  taken  away."  Here  follows  a  long  pause,  not 
as  though  a  comma  or  a  semicolon  interposed,  but 
the  pause  demanded  by  the  stalwart  figure  of  a 
stricken  man,  bowing  himself,  steadying  himself, 
leaning  upon  an  everlasting  arm  —  and  then  at 

[13] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

last  his  word  of  trust,  "  Blessed  be  the  name  of  the 
Lord."  In  all  this  Job  sinned  not  nor  charged  God 
foolishly. 

But  the  worst  was  yet  to  come !  He  was  smitten 
with  one  of  the  most  painful  forms  of  leprosy.  Ugly, 
loathsome,  running  sores  from  the  sole  of  his  foot 
to  the  crown  of  his  head !  Poor,  childless,  diseased, 
he  went  out  from  the  abode  of  men,  according  to  the 
hard  custom  of  the  time,  and  sat  down  among  the 
ashes ! 

Here  in  his  wretchedness  his  wife  came  to  him. 
We  find  a  touch  of  grim  humor  and  of  fine  art  in 
the  fact  that  the  author  spared  her  life;  the  whirl- 
wind which  killed  the  ten  children  left  her  unhurt. 
She  had  a  part  to  play  in  the  further  trial  of  Job's 
spirit.  The  Oriental  woman  is  not  supposed  to 
have  any  considerable  appreciation  for  religious 
truth  —  in  certain  quarters  she  is  even  denied  a  soul. 
It  was  fitting  therefore  that  the  author  should  put 
upon  her  uninstructed  lips  what  even  the  Adver- 
sary might  have  hesitated  to  say.  She  came  to  Job 
in  the  hour  of  his  affliction  and,  with  cruel  taunt, 
upbraided  him  for  his  pious  faith:  "Dost  thou 
still  hold  fast  thine  integrity?  Curse  God,  and  die." 
But  the  answer  of  the  sorely  tried  man  is  tender, 
considerate,  without  a  hint  of  impatience:  "What? 
Thou  speakest  as  one  of  the  godless  women  speak- 
eth.  Shall  we  receive  good  at  the  hand  of  God,  and 
shall  we  not  receive  evil?"  In  all  this  Job  sinned 
not  with  his  lips. 

There  you  have  the  situation.  A  rich  man  sud- 
denly reduced  to  poverty  —  poverty  which  has  made 

[14] 


UNEXPLAINED    ADVERSITY 

many  men  bitter,  reckless,  rebellious.  In  prosperity 
they  were  pious ;  they  knew  how  to  abound.  When 
the  property  went,  the  piety  went;  they  had  not 
learned  how  to  be  abased. 

Job's  children  were  all  dead.  And  at  the  sight  of 
such  a  picture  the  mind  hurries  away  to  the  remem- 
brance of  some  frantic  parent  pleading  for  the  life 
of  a  child,  but  growing  hard,  rebellious,  unbeliev- 
ing when  the  request  fails.  The  knee,  stiffened  by 
disappointment,  would  no  longer  bend  in  prayer! 

Job's  wife  turned  against  him.  And  there  rises 
before  our  minds  a  picture  of  those  men  who  throw 
themselves  away  in  unworthy  associations  and  in 
unloving  indifference,  in  drink  and  in  hidden  licen- 
tiousness, because  the  womanly  sympathy,  to  which 
they  naturally  turned  in  the  hour  of  need,  was  cruelly 
withheld ! 

Job's  health  was  destroyed  by  leprosy.  "Put  forth 
thine  hand  now  and  touch  his  bone  and  his  flesh, 
and  he  will  curse  thee  to  thy  face,"  the  Adversary 
had  said.  When  the  head  throbs,  and  the  nerves 
lie  all  exposed,  and  the  body  is  racked  with  pain; 
when  weariness  and  disgust  fasten  upon  the  life  be- 
cause of  dragging,  failing  health,  then  it  is  that  the 
will  so  frequently  goes  lame  and  moral  failure  comes. 
"Months  of  emptiness  and  wearisome  nights  are 
appointed  to  me,"  he  said.  But  through  it  all, 
complete  ruin  though  it  seemed,  Job  bore  himself 
as  a  hero.  "The  Lord  gave,  and  the  Lord  hath 
taken  away,"  —  bare  manhood  indeed  was  all  that 
was  now  left,  —  yet,  "  Blessed  be  the  name  of  the 
Lord!" 

[15] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

In  it  all,  the  most  painful  thought,  perhaps,  was 
the  apparent  lack  of  any  meaning  or  purpose.  Why  ? 
why?  why?  "If  the  Lord  be  with  us,  why  then  is 
all  this  befallen  us?"  baffled,  suffering,  desperate  hu- 
manity has  been  asking  all  down  the  ages.  If  a  wise 
and  good  God  is  in  control,  why  this  unspeakable 
suffering,  which  is  not  always  the  consequence  of  per- 
sonal transgression  ?  Famines  and  floods,  scourges  of 
drought  and  plagues  of  disease !  Why  has  Benefi- 
cence made  such  a  world  —  a  world  thus  controlled, 
or  (dare  we  say  it)  uncontrolled?  Into  the  joy  of 
carefully  gained  well-being  comes  the  crash  of  un- 
explained adversity,  and  we  have  upon  our  hands 
the  conflict  of  faith  with  facts. 

Thus  Job  of  old  sat  in  silence  and  pondered  the 
situation.  Why?  why?  why?  "He  hath  fenced  up 
my  way  that  I  cannot  pass;  He  hath  set  darkness 
in  my  paths." 

Then  silently  across  the  sand  of  the  desert  and 
out  of  the  darkness,  came  three  men  from  a  far  coun- 
try. Emirs  they  were,  princes  of  that  Oriental  world, 
who  having  heard  of  the  affliction  of  their  friend  had 
journeyed  across  the  sands  to  visit  him.  When  they 
saw  the  distress  which  sat  visibly  upon  his  stricken 
figure  they  hardly  knew  him !  But  in  decorous 
fashion  they  rent  their  garments  and  sprinkled  dust 
upon  their  heads,  observing  all  the  forms  of  sym- 
pathetic grief. 

"So  they  sat  down  with  him  upon  the  ground  seven 
days  and  seven  nights,  and  none  spake  a  word  unto 
him :  for  they  saw  that  his  grief  was  very  great." 


[16] 


HI.    THE    FAILURE    OF    CONVENTIONAL 
ORTHODOXY 


HERE  upon  the  ash-heap  Job  sat, 
plunged  in  the  deepest  melancholy. 
His  property  was  gone;  his  children 
were  all  dead;  his  wife  had  deserted 
him;  his  body  was  sick  and  sore.  In 
the  face  of  misfortune  so  dire,  we  are  not  surprised 
to  hear  him  open  his  lips  and  curse  the  day  that  he 
was  born.  There  seemed  to  be  a  total  lack  of  signifi- 
cance in  it  all.  "What  does  the  Almighty  mean?" 
he  asked.  He  was  confident  that  he  was  not  being 
punished  for  wrong-doing  —  he  felt  that  he  was  a 
good  man;  and  that  he  was  not  self -deceived  we 
know,  for  to  his  righteousness  God  himself  had 
borne  testimony.  Yet  here  he  lay  smitten  with  ad- 
versity unspeakable.  We  sympathize  with  him  as 
he  sobs  out, 

"I  cry  for  help,  but  there  is  no  justice. 
He  hath  fenced  up  my  way  that  I  cannot  pass, 
He  hath  set  darkness  in  my  paths." 

But  out  of  the  darkness  had  come  three  visitors 
from  afar.  Friends  and  associates  they  were  of  long 
standing,  who  having  heard  of  Job's  misfortune  had 
come  to  see  him.  And  when  they  saw  him  they  were 
amazed  beyond  expression.  They  rent  their  gar- 

"T"  [17] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

ments  and  sprinkled  dust  upon  their  heads;  they 
sat  down  with  him  seven  days  and  seven  nights, 
silent,  thoughtful,  bewildered  by  the  fact  that  such 
calamities  had  fallen  upon  so  good  a  man.  None 
of  them  ventured  a  word,  for  they  saw  that  his  grief 
was  very  great. 

The  author,  too  much  of  an  artist  to  picture  these 
friends  as  mere  obstinate,  foolish  bigots,  making 
themselves  instantly  offensive,  portrays  them  in 
the  early  stages  of  the  debate  as  well-bred,  polite, 
and  kindly,  so  far  as  adherence  to  their  hard  and 
fast  theological  system  allowed.  They  exhibited 
delicacy  of  feeling  in  silently,  sympathetically  wait- 
ing for  Job  to  utter  the  first  word.  Their  presence, 
their  bearing,  their  rent  garments,  all  testified  to 
their  deep  feeling  and  made  words  superfluous. 
Those  thoughtless  people  who  rush  in  upon  suf- 
ferers, chatter  a  few  empty  commonplaces,  toss 
them  a  few  scraps  of  hackneyed  commiseration, 
and  then  hastily  scamper  off  to  their  own  concerns, 
might  read  with  profit  the  account  of  this  approach 
to  the  abode  of  sorrow,  as  made  by  these  high- 
minded,  sympathetic  Orientals. 

But  as  the  three  friends  meditated  upon  the  situa- 
tion for  an  entire  week,  a  horrible  suspicion  gradu- 
ally fastened  itself  upon  their  minds.  Remember 
their  point  of  view:  theological  propositions  were 
fixed,  exact,  final,  without  exceptions,  and  explain- 
ing everything.  These  men  made  syllogisms  their 
meat  and  drink.  They  tried  to  deal  with  the  warm, 
throbbing,  and  varied  facts  of  life  as  logicians  do. 
"Keep  therefore  the  words  of  this  covenant,  and  do 

[18] 


CONVENTIONAL    ORTHODOXY 

them,  that  ye  may  prosper,"  was  to  them  an  incon- 
trovertible proposition.  It  was  certain  that  God 
would  measure  out  health  and  prosperity,  family 
joy,  and  abiding  success  in  exact  proportion  to  the 
degree  of  piety;  and  he  would  deal  out  adversity  in 
exact  proportion  to  the  degree  of  wickedness.  They 
no  more  doubted  the  truth  of  that  proposition  than 
they  doubted  their  own  existence ;  yet  somehow  when 
they  came  to  apply  it  to  the  facts  before  them,  there 
seemed  to  be  a  hitch  somewhere  —  unless  indeed  the 
piety  of  their  friend  was  spurious.  And  in  the  futile 
effort  to  reconcile  their  preconceived  theories  with 
admitted  facts,  we  find  the  failure  of  the  conven- 
tional orthodoxy  of  that  day. 

The  current  creed  maintained  that  piety  pays  large 
dividends  of  earthly  prosperity  here  and  now,  without 
exception  or  interruption.  This  is  the  theological 
theory  put  forward  with  hearty  confidence  in  the 
book  of  Deuteronomy;  it  is  brought  out  as  a  "Thus 
saith  the  Lord."  The  same  doctrine  is  serenely  con- 
firmed by  the  author  of  the  Proverbs  from  experi- 
ence, observation,  and  the  considerations  of  moral 
reason.  But  in  the  book  of  Job  it  is  openly  ques- 
tioned, and  in  the  book  of  Ecclesiastes  it  is,  by  a  later 
skepticism,  flatly  denied.  It  was,  however,  the  un- 
questioned belief  of  Job's  friends  and  of  Job  him- 
self. Let  a  man  delight  himself  in  the  law  of  the 
Lord  and  he  will  be  like  a  tree  planted  by  the  river 
of  water;  he  will  bring  forth  fruit  in  his  season,  his 
leaf  shall  not  wither;  and  whatsoever  he  may  do, 
will  prosper.  This  was  accepted  as  an  exact,  uni- 
versal, and  fixed  proposition. 

[19] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

And  the  converse  of  this  was  held ;  adversity  was 
uniformly  regarded  as  the  penalty  for  wrong-doing. 
Sickness,  sorrow,  loss  of  property,  or  the  death  of 
one's  children,  meant  always  that  the  sufferers  were 
receiving  their  just  deserts  for  some  transgression. 
The  tough  persistence  of  this  conviction  was  mar- 
velous. As  late  as  the  time  of  Christ  it  was  felt  that 
the  men  on  whom  the  badly  built  Tower  of  Siloam 
fell  must  in  some  way  have  been  sinners  above  all 
the  men  in  Jerusalem.  In  the  presence  of  pitiable 
blindness  we  hear  the  disciples  saying:  "Master, 
who  did  sin,  this  man,  or  his  parents,  that  he  should 
be  born  blind  ?  "  And  when  Paul  at  Malta,  escaping 
from  shipwreck,  was  attacked  by  a  viper,  the  natives 
said  among  themselves:  "No  doubt  this  man  is  a 
murderer,  whom,  though  he  hath  escaped  from  the 
sea,  yet  Justice  hath  not  suffered  to  live."  This  was 
the  unchallenged  belief  for  centuries. 

Thus  when  the  three  friends  sat  and  pondered 
Job's  situation  for  that  whole  week,  this  suspicion 
forced  itself  upon  them:  "He  was  not  so  good  a 
man  as  we  supposed.  He  must  have  been  secretly 
violating  the  terms  of  the  covenant.  His  leaf  has 
withered,  and  that  which  he  was  doing  has  not  pros- 
pered ;  and  therefore  his  delight  could  not  have  been 
in  the  law  of  the  Lord.  He  must  have  been  in  the 
habit  of  turning  aside  to  some  secret  transgression." 
They  were  driven  to  this  conclusion  by  the  demands 
of  their  theological  system,  and  they  were  compelled 
to  believe  that  Job  must  have  been  wicked  to  an 
extraordinary  degree,  since  such  unprecedented  ad- 
versity had  fallen  upon  him. 

[20] 


CONVENTIONAL    ORTHODOXY 

It  was  a  delicate  matter  to  suggest  such  a  thought 
to  him,  and  Eliphaz,  apparently  the  eldest  of  the 
three,  offers  the  first  word : 

"If  one  assay  to  commune  with  thee,  wilt  thou  be  grieved  ? 
But  who  can  withhold  himself  from  speaking  ? 
Behold,  thou  hast  instructed  many. 
But  now  it  is  come  unto  thee,  and  thou  faintest. 

"Is  not  thy  fear  of  God  thy  confidence, 
And  thy  hope  the  integrity  of  thy  ways  ? 
Who  ever  perished,  being  innocent  ? 
Or  where  were  the  upright  cut  off  ? 
According  as  I  have  seen,  they  that  plow  iniquity, 
And  sow  trouble,  reap  the  same. 
As  for  me,  I  would  seek  unto  God, 
And  unto  God  would  I  commit  my  cause.*' 

Then  Bildad  takes  up  the  same  strain: 

"Doth  God  pervert  judgment? 
Or  doth  the  Almighty  pervert  justice  ? 
If  thy  children  have  sinned  against  him, 
Then  he  hath  delivered  them  into  the  hand  of  their 

transgression : 

If  thou  wert  pure  and  upright ; 
Surely  now  he  would  awake  for  thee, 
And  make  the  habitation  of  thy  righteousness  prosperous. 
Behold,  God  will  not  cast  away  a  perfect  man, 
Neither  will  he  uphold  the  evil-doers." 

Eliphaz  had  spoken  first  as  the  eldest  of  the  three, 
for  the  common  feeling  was  that  "Days  should  speak, 
and  multitude  of  years  should  teach  wisdom."  He 

[21] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

spoke  mainly  from  experience,  from  'the  things  that 
he  had  seen.'  Then  came  Bildad,  who  made  the 
traditions  of  the  elders  his  main  reliance,  applying 
ruthlessly  "that  which  their  fathers  have  searched 
out:  for  we  are  but  of  yesterday."  Then  Zophar, 
less  considerate  than  the  others,  blunt,  hard,  quick, 
burst  out  at  the  close  of  Job's  reply : 

"Oh  that  God  would  speak, 
And  open  his  lips  against  thee. 

Know  therefore  that  God  exacteth  of  thee  less  than  thine 
iniquity  deserveth." 

In  these  brief  extracts  we  have  the  gist  of  all  that 
the  three  theologians  had  to  say.  They  were  advo- 
cates of  a  fixed  system,  and  their  minds  were  com- 
pelled to  run  in  a  narrow  groove.  Since  God  is  just, 
good  men  must  prosper.  Job  has  not  prospered, 
therefore  he  cannot  have  been  a  good  man.  So  they 
reasoned  and  so  they  spoke.  As  the  debate  went  on, 
their  minds  became  heated  by  the  clash  of  opinions ; 
the  suggestion  as  to  possible  fault  on  Job's  part  led 
to  open  insinuation,  and  insinuation  to  strong  and 
bitter  accusation.  Their  tempers  gradually  rose  until 
Zophar  at  least  was  openly  abusive.  These  men 
actually  came  to  the  point  where  they  felt  that  re- 
sistance to  their  theory  was  resistance  to  God.  They 
finally  reached  that  state  of  feeling  where  they  burst 
into  a  fierce  denunciation  of  the  patient  sufferer  for 
his  steadfast  adherence  to  facts,  as  if  in  some  way 
he  were  guilty  of  actual  blasphemy. 

Respectable  and  conventional  orthodoxy  rests  al- 

[22] 


CONVENTIONAL    ORTHODOXY 

ways  upon  certain  truths  and  has  genuine  value, 
otherwise  it  would  never  have  become  respectable 
and  conventional.  A  prominent  Englishman,  once 
asked  by  a  Non-conformist  why  he  supported  the 
Established  Church,  replied:  "I  support  it  because 
it  is  established;  establish  your  church  and  I  will 
support  that."  He  was  conscious  of  the  fact  that  any 
system  of  belief  or  worship  must  have  real  value  in 
order  to  win  the  consent  and  support  of  serious  people 
to  such  an  extent  as  to  become  established.  And  all 
this  was  as  true  in  the  days  of  Eliphaz,  Bildad,  and 
Zophar  as  in  the  days  of  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles 
or  the  Westminster  Confession.  Respectable  ortho- 
doxy must  have  elements  of  strength  in  it  in  order 
to  attain  such  position. 

This  ancient  orthodoxy  failed  because  of  its  ina- 
bility or  unwillingness  to  affirm  great  principles  and 
general  tendencies,  and  yet  make  room  within  the 
system  for  possible  exceptions,  modifications,  things 
not  understood  as  yet;  in  a  word,  it  left  no  room 
for  adjustment  and  growth.  As  a  general  principle 
it  is  true  that  good  men  prosper  and  evil  men  suffer 
in  material  well-being  as  well  as  on  those  higher 
levels  where  character  is  won  or  lost.  But  one  can- 
not press  this  as  a  hard  and  fast  statement  applicable 
in  every  case  or  it  will  collapse  under  the  stress  of 
certain  untoward  experiences. 

There  was  a  man  in  the  land  of  TJz  whose  name 
was  Job,  a  sound,  straight,  God-fearing,  evil-hating 
man,  but  somehow  sore  adversity  fell  to  his  lot. 
There  was  a  man  in  the  land  of  New  York  whose 
name  was  George  E.  Waring,  a  sound,  straight,  God- 

[23] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

fearing,  evil-hating  man,  whose  integrity,  public 
spirit,  unselfish  generosity  were  a  benediction  to  his 
city  and  to  his  state.  The  land  could  ill  afford  to 
lose  a  man  so  real,  but  in  the  heroic  discharge  of  his 
duty  he  was  smitten  with  disease  and  died  before  his 
time !  At  the  same  hour  there  was  also  in  the  land 
of  New  York  a  man  whose  name  has  become  a  by- 
word for  political  corruption,  mean,  selfish,  noxious, 
building  up  without  visible  business  a  fortune  to  be 
spent  on  the  race-tracks  of  Europe,  a  menace  to  his 
city,  to  his  state,  and  to  the  nation.  How  well  the 
land  could  have  afforded  to  lose  him,  yet  he  lived 
on,  healthy,  strong,  influential,  and  prosperous ! 
Great  principles  and  general  tendencies  seem  to  be 
subject  to  modification  at  the  hands  of  special  sets 
of  circumstances.  And  this  is  well,  for  it  is  true 
that  "the  world  becomes  not  less,  but  more  ideal, 
where  the  providential  system  of  government  gives 
room  for  principles  other  than  retributive.  Moral 
elevation  implies  moral  choice.  But  if  the  con- 
nection between  character  and  fate  were  immu- 
table —  if  righteousness  necessarily  and  inevitably 
brought  reward,  and  guilt  necessarily  and  inevitably 
ruin,  —  then  in  so  mechanical  a  life  men  would  be 
forever  choosing  between  prosperity  and  adversity, 
while  there  would  be  no  opportunity  for  the  higher 
choice  between  right  and  wrong." 

The  failure  of  the  current  orthodoxy  of  that  day 
was  not  in  the  single  case  of  Job,  but  in  its  whole 
method  and  line  of  approach.  Having  built  up  a 
theory  which  pointed  to  a  part  of  the  truth,  it  became 
hard,  impervious,  indifferent  to  new  facts.  When 

[24] 


CONVENTIONAL    ORTHODOXY 

collision  came  between  the  formula  and  the  fact,  it 
squirmed  and  tried  to  explain  away  or  deny  the  fact ; 
in  some  way  the  system  must  be  guarded  intact.  The 
refusal  of  the  inductive  method  which  proceeds  from 
facts  to  general  principles,  the  habit  of  holding  to 
fixed  a  priori  systems  and  concealing  or  twisting 
facts  to  meet  the  emergencies  which  arise,  will  of 
necessity  bring  defeat  to  the  cause  of  Him  who  says, 
"I  am  the  truth."  The  systems  come  and  go  — 
"all  little  systems  have  their  day,  they  have  their  day 
and  cease  to  be  "  —  and  our  only  permanent  safety 
lies  in  the  determination  to  see  things  as  they  are,  to 
call  them  by  their  right  names,  to  be  loyal  ever  to 
the  leadership  of  facts,  and  to  be  open  to  the  neces- 
sity for  readjustment  in  our  theories  as  further 
knowledge  comes. 

Job's  friends  were  confronting  an  actual  situa- 
tion with  a  hard  and  fast  theory  —  good  men  must 
prosper,  bad  men  and  only  bad  men  must  suffer; 
but  somehow  the  theory  was  in  conflict  with  the  facts. 
To  this  day  the  same  suicidal  course  is  followed  here 
and  there.  The  claim  is  sometimes  made  that  the 
Bible  is  God's  inspired  Word,  and  that  inasmuch  as 
God  would  not  give  us  anything  but  an  infallible  rev- 
elation of  himself,  the  Bible  must  be  infallible.  But 
when  men  begin  to  study  the  Bible,  they  find  that  it 
is  not  in  every  line  infallible;  the  scientific  ideas 
expressed  are  sometimes  those  of  an  earlier  period 
rather  than  the  final  word  of  actual  investigation ; 
the  same  events  are  recorded  in  accounts  which  vary 
in  many  details;  a  moral  conception  stated  some- 
times as  a  "Thus  saith  the  Lord"  is  on  a  lower  level 

[25] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

than  the  expressed  mind  of  Christ,  and  represents  an 
immature  state  of  moral  development.  The  whole 
revelation  lies  imbedded  in  a  genuinely  historical 
process,  where  men  of  like  passions  with  us  speak  as 
they  were  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  giving  us  the 
heavenly  treasure  of  the  divine  truth  they  saw  in 
the  earthen  vessels  of  their  own  particular  experience. 
The  theory  that  the  Bible  is  absolutely  infallible 
breaks  down  in  the  presence  of  certain  scientific, 
historic,  and  moral  references.  But  the  books  of  the 
Bible,  when  rightly  viewed  and  justly  interpreted,  re- 
main a  revelation  which  in  all  its  great  principles  is 
perfectly  adapted  for  doctrine,  for  reproof,  for  cor- 
rection, for  instruction  in  righteousness,  able  to  make 
men  wise  unto  salvation  and  furnish  them  thoroughly 
for  all  good  work. 

The  same  method  is  necessary  in  deciding  upon 
the  efficacy  of  prayer,  in  molding  our  doctrine  of 
providence,  in  determining  our  beliefs  on  many  im- 
portant points.  Many  hard  and  fast  theories  have 
been  going  down  before  the  majesty  of  fact.  But 
the  inductive  method,  proceeding  from  the  ascer- 
tained truths  of  spiritual  experience  to  the  real  im- 
plications of  those  truths  as  expressed  in  general 
principles,  is  ever  the  pathway  to  security  and  peace. 
If  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  could  not  stand  rigor- 
ous research,  free  inquiry,  unhesitating  loyalty  to 
facts,  such  as  science  and  history,  economics  and 
ethics  are  compelled  to  stand,  it  would  be  doomed. 
But  in  the  judgment  of  those  who  are  its  most  intel- 
ligent advocates,  it  can  stand  them  and  is  standing 
them. 

[26] 


CONVENTIONAL    ORTHODOXY 

In  such  inductive  study  all  the  facts  of  experience 
must  have  a  hearing.  Conscience,  aspiration,  the 
feeling  of  guilt,  the  joy  of  deliverance,  the  sense  of 
acceptance  and  peace,  all  these  are  truths  estab- 
lished by  experience.  Jesus  Christ  and  his  impress 
on  the  life  of  the  world,  this  collection  of  writings 
known  as  the  Bible  and  the  unique  influence  it  has 
exerted  upon  the  spiritual  life  of  mankind,  are  facts 
of  experience.  All  these  truths  must  have  an  honest 
hearing  when  we  come  to  shape  our  philosophy  of 
life.  And  so  useful  will  be  the  light  they  shed  that 
we  can  afford  to  hold  fast  to  the  facts,  taking  them 
in  their  wider  range,  and  to  proceed  inductively,  allow- 
ing the  systems  to  take  care  of  themselves  as  best 
they  may. 

It  is  possible  to  make  a  strong  argument  for  the 
claim  that  good  men  prosper  and  only  bad  men  suf- 
fer, if  we  pick  and  choose,  but  taking  the  facts  as 
they  come,  by  and  large,  we  are  left  with  confusing 
questions  as  to  the  divine  justice  upon  our  hands. 
The  arraignment  of  John  Stuart  Mill  seems  beyond 
answer,  "If  the  law  of  all  creation  was  justice  and 
the  Creator  were  omnipotent,  then  each  person's 
share  of  happiness  or  suffering  would  be  exactly 
proportioned  to  that  person's  good  or  evil  deeds.  No 
human  being  would  have  a  worse  lot  than  another 
without  worse  desert;  accident  or  favoritism  would 
have  no  place  in  such  a  world.  And  no  one  is  able 
to  blind  himself  to  the  fact  that  the  world  we  live 
in  is  totally  different  from  this." 

If  indeed  suffering  has  no  other  office  than  penalty 
for  wrong-doing;  if  all  of  God's  accounts  are  settled 

[27] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

in  this  world  with  no  further  pages  of  experience  to 
be  unrolled  in  the  future ;  if  all  the  facts  bearing  on 
the  case  are  within  our  grasp,  then  providence  in 
certain  cases  must  be  admitted  to  be  unjust.  The 
very  dilemma  in  which  Job  found  himself  raised  the 
query  in  his  mind  —  "If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live 
again?"  The  answer  given  is  either  negative  or  at 
best  a  confessed  inability  to  affirm  a  future  life,  but 
it  serves  to  show  the  action  of  a  serious  mind  pushing 
on  for  a  possible  vindication  beyond  the  grave.  The 
main  failure  of  these  friends  lay  then  in  their  effort 
to  bend  every  set  of  concrete  facts  to  suit  a  precon- 
ceived theory.  Safety  lies  rather  in  affirming  great 
principles  and  general  tendencies,  but  allowing  for 
the  modifying  influence  of  unusual  sets  of  facts,  and 
making  room  for  the  instruction  of  further  experience. 
The  brutal  insistence  of  the  three  friends  touching 
their  claim  brought  from  Job  a  stout  protest.  They 
accused  him  of  impatience,  and  impatient  he  surely 
was.  But  there  was  occasion.  The  three  men  were 
forgetting  how  much  easier  it  is  to  sit  off  and  coolly 
discuss  another's  misfortune,  than  it  is  to  stand  under 
and  bear  it. 

"To  him  that  is  ready  to  faint  kindness  should  be  shewed 

from  his  friend; 
Even  to  him  that  forsaketh  the  fear  of  the  Almighty. 

"  Oh  that  my  vexation  were  but  weighed, 
And  my  calamity  laid  in  the  balances  together ! 
For  now  it  would  be  heavier  than  the  sand  of  the  seas: 
Therefore  have  my  words  been  rash. 
For  the  arrows  of  the  Almighty  are  within  me. 

[28] 


CONVENTIONAL    ORTHODOXY 

I  also  could  speak  as  you  do ; 
If  your  soul  were  in  my  soul's  stead, 
I  could  join  words  together  against  you,  - 
And  shake  mine  head  at  you. " 

It  is  a  heartfelt  appeal  which  he  makes  to  them; 
it  is  the  cry  of  one  ready  to  faint,  of  a  man  barely 
alive,  feeling  the  thrust  of  the  Almighty's  arrows 
within  him.  He  suffered  more  than  the  loss  of  prop- 
erty and  health,  of  wife  and  children;  he  suffered 
the  loss  of  the  confidence  and  esteem  of  his  fellow 
men.  They  did  regard  him  stricken  and  smitten  of 
God  for  his  iniquities.  His  calamity  seemed  to  im- 
peach his  integrity  and  to  brand  him  as  wicked  before 
the  world.  This  was  the  sorest  thrust  of  all,  and  we 
appreciate  fully  his  impatience  and  bitterness  when 
goaded  by  their  cruel  words.  We  are  not  studying 
here  the  utterance  of  a  man  sitting  easily  in  his 
dressing-gown  and  slippers,  smoking  a  comfortable 
pipe,  while  he  coolly  discusses  the  painful  problems  of 
existence.  Job  writhed  in  the  pain  of  the  problem 
with  which  he  grappled.  He  saw  how  much  easier  it 
was  to  be  resigned  and  philosophical  over  the  trials  of 
others  than  over  one's  own,  and  as  these  friends  spoke 
on,  he  discovered  that  they  were  not  penetrating  to 
the  secret  of  his  experience ;  nor  were  they  frank  and 
ingenuous.  They  were  not  even  fair  —  they  were 
speaking  unrighteously  for  God  and  talking  wickedly 
for  their  system.  Therefore  he  refused  all  their  words 
as  being  impotent  and  vaih. 

"I  have  heard  many  such  things: 
Miserable  comforters  are  ye  all." 

[29] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

But  he  could  not  rest  in  that  bare  refusal ;  he  never 
became  the  passive  stoic  or  despairing  idler.  He 
was  ever  and  eagerly  seeking  some  genuine  solution. 

"Oh  that  I  knew  where  I  might  find  him, 
That  I  might  come  even  to  his  seat ! 
I  would  order  my  cause  before  him, 
And  fill  my  mouth  with  arguments. 
Surely  I  would  speak  to  the  Almighty, 
And  I  desire  to  reason  with  God. 
Behold,  I  go  forward,  but  he  is  not  there; 
And  backward,  but  I  cannot  perceive  him.'* 

Finding  this  effort  unavailing,  his  mind  turned  to 
the  thought  of  a  possible  Arbiter  between  himself 
and  the  Almighty,  but  there  seemed  to  be  no  such 
Mediator  within  reach. 

"If  I  have  sinned,  what  can  I  do  unto  thee, 
O  thou  watcher  of  men ! 

For  he  is  not  a  man,  as  I  am,  that  I  should  answer  him; 
There  is  no  daysman  betwixt  us, 
That  might  lay  his  hand  upon  us  both." 

He  also  raised  that  question  of  a  future  life  —  "If 
a  man  die,  shall  he  live  again  ? "  — •  but  according  to 
the  imperfect  faith  of  that  early  time  the  hope  was  too 
vague  to  be  relied  upon.  "He  will  slay  me ;  I  have  no 
hope."  And  thus  he  fell  back,  unsatisfied  with  any- 
thing thus  far  gained.  Orthodoxy  as  he  knew  it  had 
failed  to  reconcile  such  adversity  as  his  with  divine 
justice.  He  could  only  cry : 

"He  hath  fenced  up  my  way  that  I  cannot  pass; 
He  hath  set  darkness  in  my  paths." 


[30] 


IV.    THE    SPIRITUAL   ENERGY    OF   A 
PERPLEXED    MAN 


HE  patient  sufferer  realized  that  the 
theological  theories  of  his  day  when 
held  apart  could  be  defended  with  some 
show  of  reason,  but  that  they  broke 
down  in  the  presence  of  actual  experi- 
ences. Yet  he  never  allowed  himself  to  fall  into 
that  negative  attitude  which  is  easily  contented  with 
knocking  over  the  cob  houses  of  belief  proposed 
by  weaker  men,  meanwhile  building  nothing  itself. 
Job  was  a  man  of  spiritual  energy,  courageous, 
positive,  constructive  in  the  whole  bent  of  his  mind. 
He  reached  out,  if  haply  he  might  find  some  truth 
not  yet  embodied  in  the  current  systems.  He  stood 
perplexed  because  he  was  confronted  by  problems 
confessedly  too  hard  for  him;  faith,  if  it  lives  at 
all,  must  live  in  a  world  shadowed  and  confusing. 
His  system,  and  that  of  the  three  friends,  had  col- 
lapsed because  the  facts  undermined  the  claim  that 
good  men  always  prosper  and  only  evil  men  suffer. 
It  will  be  interesting,  then,  to  see  how  this  man  of 
spiritual  energy,  too  honest  to  pretend,  too  sincere 
to  utter  forms  of  faith  which  represent  nothing  real, 
too  frank  to  conceal  the  vital  points  of  his  own  dif- 
ficulty, bears  himself  at  such  a  juncture. 

First  of  all  he  will  not  stoop  to  any  pretense  regard- 
ing his  own  character.     He  was  suffering  extraordi- 

[31] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

nary  misfortune  'which  to  the  theological  mind  of 
that  day  was  sure  evidence  of  heinous  wrong-doing; 
he  was  consequently  urged  to  make  confession  of  his 
sins  and  obtain  forgiveness.  The  appeal  of  one  of 
these  friends  was  to  this  effect: 

"As  for  me,  I  would  seek  unto  God. 
If  iniquity  be  in  thine  hand,  put  it  far  away. 
Acquaint  now  thyself  with  him,  and  be  at  peace." 

But  Job  was  conscious  that  he  had  not  been  so 
wicked  as  to  merit  such  misfortune;  his  unceasing 
purpose  had  been  to  live  a  godly,  upright,  useful  life. 
We  have  the  testimony  of  the  Lord  himself  that  in 
this  regard  Job  was  not  self -deceived.  He  was  in- 
deed a  sound,  straight,  God-fearing,  evil-hating 
man,  and  there  was  none  like  him  in  all  the  earth. 
For  such  a  man,  out  of  deference  to  the  requirements 
of  a  system,  to  grovel  and  accuse  himself,  to  make 
believe  that  there  was  some  hidden  wickedness  about 
him  which  merited  such  misfortune,  would  have  been 
flatly  dishonest.  Job  was  throughout  a  man  who 
clung  to  reality  with  both  hands,  allowing  the 
theories  to  take  care  of  themselves  as  best  they 
might.  Thus  he  refused  to  make  any  such  confes- 
sion of  wrong-doing. 

"He  will  slay  me;  I  have  no  hope: 
Nevertheless  I  will  maintain  my  ways  before  him; 
Till  I  die  I  will  not  put  away  mine  integrity  from  me." 

The  Adversary  had  raised  the  question  of  motive 
—  "Does  Job  serve  God  for  nought;  is  he  not  doing 

[32] 


SPIRITUAL    ENERGY    OF    A    MAN 

it  all  for  pay?"  His  three  friends  had  raised  the 
question  of  fact :  —  Does  Job  serve  God  at  all ;  is  he 
not  secretly  an  awful  sinner,  deserving  this  unusual 
misfortune  ?  They  argued  with  him,  entreated  him, 
and  even  sought  to  browbeat  him  into  making  a  con- 
fession of  some  hidden  wickedness.  But  though  the 
teaching  of  his  day  and  his  own  suffering  seemed 
successfully  to  impeach  him,  he  held  firmly  to  the 
testimony  of  his  own  conscience  and  to  the  assurance 
of  the  Divine  Spirit,  for  God  does  not  leave  himself 
without  witness  in  the  heart  of  any  man  who  seeks 
to  do  His  will. 

"Let  come  on  me  what  will, 
I  will  maintain  my  ways  before  him. " 

When  John  Lord,  the  author  of  "  Beacon  Lights  of 
History,"  was  being  examined  by  an  ecclesiastical 
council  in  his  early  ministry,  he  was  asked  if  his  con- 
secration was  such  that  he  would  be  willing  to  be 
damned,  if  need  be,  for  the  glory  of  God.  It  was  in 
the  days  when  Calvinism  was  in  the  saddle,  and  this 
classical  question  was  a  common  test  of  one's  spirit 
of  submission  to  the  divine  decrees.  John  Lord  re- 
plied that  he  would  not.  And  in  response  to  further 
question  and  argument  on  the  part  of  the  examiners, 
all  he  could  be  gotten  to  say  was,  that  he  was  willing 
that  some  of  the  members  of  the  council  should  be 
damned  for  the  glory  of  God,  if  need  be.  This  reso- 
lute instinct  of  self-preservation  and  of  self-respect 
on  the  part  of  a  conscientious  man  was  sound  and 
right.  So  Job  maintained  the  truth  of  his  position 

"T"  [33] 


>v 

OF  THE  \ 

|    UNIVERSITY  ) 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

and  refused  to  stultify  himself  by  any  unreal  confes- 
sion as  to  a  sense  of  sinfulness  which  did  not  exist. 

His  own  conscience  and  the  spirit  of  the  Almighty 
both  witnessed  to  his  integrity,  but  he  could  also  ap- 
peal to  the  open  record  of  his  life  and  challenge  his 
accusers  to  bring  in  their  indictment  if  they  were 
able.  This  fine  passage  has  been  called  "the  oath 
of  clearing."  He  passed  those  aspects  of  his  life, 
where  strong  men  are  apt  to  fail,  in  searching  review, 
and  they  seemed  to  stand  the  test.  His  conception 
of  piety  far  outran  the  usual  Old  Testament  stand- 
ards ;  it  was  not  legal,  but  evangelical.  Not  merely 
was  the  act  of  adultery  disclaimed,  but  the  unholy 
glance  of  the  eye;  not  merely  the  unjust  accumula- 
tion of  wealth  was  denied,  but  that  immoral  confi- 
dence which  it  is  so  easy  to  cherish  in  one's  material 
possessions  when  they  become  great.  Not  merely 
had  the  open  idolatry  of  the  sun  or  of  the  host 
of  heaven  been  refused,  but  even  the  inclination  to 
set  up  the  creature  in  the  place  belonging  to  the 
Creator.  His  righteousness  exceeded  the  righteous- 
ness of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  and  it  was  such 
"ways"  that  he  was  resolved  to  maintain  and  defend 
before  the  Lord. 

Hear,  then,  his  "oath  of  clearing"  as  he  challenges 
them  to  deny  or  to  discredit  the  constituent  elements 
in  his  integrity. 

He  is  free  from  social  impurity : 

"I  made  a  covenant  with  mine  eyes; 
How  then  should  I  look  upon  a  maid  ? 
If  mine  heart  hath  been  enticed  unto  a  woman, 

[34] 


SPIRITUAL    ENERGY    OF   A    MAN 

And  I  have  laid  in  wait  at  my  neighbor's  door: 

Then  let  my  wife  bow  down 

And  become  the  menial  slave  of  another." 

He  has  never  been  a  harsh  employer: 

"If  I  did  despise  the  cause  of  my  manservant  or  of  my 

maidservant, 

When  they  contended  with  me: 
What  then  shall  I  do  when  God  riseth  up  ? 
And  when  he  visiteth,  what  shall  I  answer  him  ? 
Did  not  he  that  made  me  hi  the  womb  make  him  ?" 

He  has  never  been  guilty  of  that  haughty  pride 
which  is  so  easy  to  the  prosperous,  nor  has  he  put 
things  before  God: 

"If  I  have  made  gold  my  hope, 
Or  rejoiced  because  my  right  hand  had  gotten  much; 
If  I  beheld  the  sun  when  it  sinned, 
Or  the  moon  walking  in  brightness; 
And  my  heart  hath  been  secretly  enticed, 
Then  let  mine  iniquity  be  punished  by  the  judge." 

He  has  never  taken  advantage  of  the  misfortunes 
of  men  nor  oppressed  those  who  were  his  enemies: 

"If  I  rejoiced  at  the  destruction  of  him  that  hated  me, 
Or  lifted  up  myself  when  evil  found  him; 
If  I  have  eaten  the  fruits  of  the  land  without  money, 
Or  have  caused  the  owners  thereof  to  lose  their  life: 
Let  thistles  grow  instead  of  wheat, 
And  cockle  instead  of  barley." 

[35] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

He  has  been  actively  kind  and  helpful  to  those  who 
were  in  want: 

"I  was  eyes  to  the  blind,  feet  to  the  lame, 
And  a  father  to  the  needy ! 
If  I  have  withheld  the  poor  from  their  desire, 
Or  have  caused  the  eyes  of  the  widow  to  fail; 
If  I  have  eaten  my  morsel  alone, 
And  the  fatherless  hath  not  eaten  thereof; 
Then  let  my  shoulder  fall  from  the  shoulder  blade, 
And  mine  arm  be  broken  from  the  bone." 

Thus  he  refused  to  mix  his  colors  or  to  make  a  pre- 
tense of  confession  where  wilful  sin  did  not  exist. 
He  reviewed  his  actions,  his  habits,  his  desires,  and 
found  that  he  had  sought  to  live  a  godly,  upright,  and 
useful  life.  He  could  not  therefore  admit  that  such 
adversity  was  a  just  penalty  upon  some  secret  wrong- 
doing. He  stood  before  his  friends  and  before  God 
maintaining  his  "ways";  and  in  the  end  he  is  com- 
mended for  his  straightforward  honesty. 

In  the  hour  of  terrible  misfortune,  he  furthermore 
held  to  this  path  of  uprightness.  In  a  former  chapter 
we  have  seen  the  shock  which  this  unexplained 
adversity  brought.  When  his  property  was  all  swept 
away  through  no  fault  of  his  own ;  when  his  children 
were  all  killed  by  the  storm ;  when  his  health  yielded 
to  the  dreadful  disease  of  leprosy;  when  his  wife 
turned  from  him  in  bitterness  and  scorn;  when  his 
friends  lost  faith  in  his  sincerity  and  suspected  him 
of  hidden  crime,  —  in  the  face  of  all  this  it  would 
have  been  easy  to  cast  all  principle  to  the  winds.  If 
such  distress  comes  to  a  life  like  mine,  he  might  have 

[36] 


SPIRITUAL    ENERGY    OF    A    MAN 

said,  What  is  the  use  to  try  to  serve  God  or  to  live 
righteously?  It  requires  moral  stamina  for  an  up- 
right man  overtaken  by  defeat  not  to  become  re- 
bellious and  reckless  through  sheer  distrust  of  the 
moral  order. 

There  is  something  sublime,  therefore,  in  the  way 
this  man  bore  himself  in  the  hour  of  misfortune. 
When  calamity  fell  upon  him,  he  still  stood  up  to 
say,  "We  have  received  good  things  at  the  hand  of 
God,  shall  we  not  also  receive  hard  things?  The 
Lord  gave,  and  the  Lord  hath  taken  away ;  blessed 
be  the  name  of  the  Lord."  It  was  no  mere  pious 
outburst  of  the  moment  called  forth  in  the  excitement 
of  a  crisis.  In  the  weary  days  that  followed  when 
poverty  and  disease,  loneliness  and  suspicion  clothed 
him  as  with  a  garment,  he  still  maintained  his  right- 
eousness before  God.  He  will  defend  his  integrity  in 
the  past;  he  will  maintain  the  same  purpose  of 
righteousness  in  the  shadowed  and  confusing  present ; 
he  will  persist  in  it  whatever  may  be  the  future ! 

"I  will  maintain  my  ways  before  him. 
He  will  slay  me;  I  have  no  hope, 
Till  I  die  I  will  not  put  away  mine  integrity  from  me." 

The  friends  of  Job  were  mistaken  as  to  the  fact  — 
Job  did  serve  God.  He  had  always  been  serving 
him  and  even  the  direst  misfortune  could  not  disturb 
that  fundamental  attitude  of  his  life.  The  Adversary 
was  mistaken  as  to  the  motive  —  Job  was  not  serving 
God  for  pay.  His  service  continued  when  that 
which  the  Adversary  called  "pay"  had  stopped. 

[37] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

Job  served  God  when  he  was  rich, healthy, and  happy; 
he  served  him  on  the  ash-heap,  poor,  sick,  childless, 
and  suspected.  And  conscious  of  his  unwavering 
integrity,  he  indulged  at  this  point  in  a  touching 
retrospect;  in  the  midst  of  pain  and  doubt,  he 
summoned  to  his  aid  certain  precious  and  sunny 
memories : 

"Oh  that  I  were  as  in  the  months  of  old, 
As  in  the  days  when  God  watched  over  me; 
When  his  lamp  shined  upon  my  head ! 
When  the  ear  heard  me,  then  it  blessed  me; 
When  the  eye  saw  me,  it  gave  witness  unto  me, 
But  now  they  that  are  younger  than  I  have  me  in  derision, 
And  now  I  am  become  their  song, 
Yea,  I  am  a  byword  unto  them." 

But  melancholy  as  was  his  situation,  his  righteous 
determination  was  not  surrendered.  Sick  or  well, 
rich  or  poor,  happy  or  wretched,  esteemed  or  despised, 
clear  in  his  belief,  or  confused  to  the  point  of  despair, 
till  he  dies,  he  is  resolved  not  to  remove  his  integrity 
from  him !  Here  is  the  one  place  of  security  for  the 
man  plunged  in  misfortune  or  overcome  by  doubt  — 
whatever  else  is  uncertain,  this  is  sure,  it  is  always 
right  to  do  right.  In  the  face  of  all  the  uncertainty 
and  confusion  possible, 

"Behold,  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  that  is  wisdom; 
And  to  depart  from  evil  is  understanding." 

But  some  modification  of  Job's  belief  must  of 
necessity  result  from  the  suffering  he  has  endured. 

[38] 


SPIRITUAL    ENERGY    OF    A    MAN 

The  fuller  treatment  of  the  correction  and  purifica- 
tion of  his  faith  will  come  later,  but  some  mention  of 
his  changed  point  of  view  may  be  made  here.  His 
own  theological  theory  had  been  precisely  the  one 
brought  forward  by  his  friends,  that  good  men  prosper 
and  bad  men  suffer,  because  God  is  just.  He  listened 
while  Eliphaz,  Bildad,  and  Zophar  said  all  there  was 
to  be  said  on  behalf  of  such  a  claim;  he  reviewed 
his  own  observation  and  experience,  but  there  was 
no  help  for  it,  the  theory  broke  down  in  the  presence 
of  actual  facts.  Good  men  had  been  overtaken  by 
unspeakable  misfortune;  and  conversely  bad  men 
had  sometimes  seemed  to  escape  the  just  penalty  of 
their  misdeeds.  Job  was  confused,  and  while  not 
in  a  position  to  put  forward  a  new  system  of  belief, 
the  necessity  of  some  modification  was  forced  home. 

The  beginning  of  that  modification  seemed  to  come 
in  the  feeling  that  the  religious  philosophy  of  that 
day  was  not  final ;  there  were  facts  which  it  did  not 
interpret.  It  was  idle  and  useless  to  ignore  these 
or  to  seek  to  cover  them  up  with  contradictions. 
Material  prosperity  could  not  inevitably  be  taken 
as  a  sign  of  God's  favor;  and  suffering  must  have 
some  other  office  than  that  of  penalty ;  granting  its 
usefulness  as  penalty  for  wrong-doing,  this  certainly 
does  not  give  a  complete  account  of  its  place  in  the 
moral  economy  of  the  world. 

We  have  made  progress  when  once  we  have  broken 
up  that  fixed,  hard,  impervious  state  of  mind.  Let 
men  admit  that  their  present  definitions  of  many 
spiritual  realities,  the  providence  of  God,  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Scriptures,  the  efficacy  of  prayer,  the  moral 

[39] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

transformation  by  divine  grace,  are  at  their  best  only 
approximate  statements  of  realities  too  great  for 
final  definition,  realities  sure  to  make  further  dis- 
closures of  themselves  by  the  added  experience  of 
mankind,  and  room  is  made  at  once  for  that  pro- 
gressive spiritual  education  of  the  race  which  God 
has  been  conducting  from  the  first,  is  conducting 
now,  and  is  to  carry  forward  through  the  unfolding 
years. 

We  do  not  find  those  once  familiar  words  "Finis" 
or  "The  End"  printed  on  the  last  page  of  a  book  so 
commonly  as  in  other  days.  Even  when  the  author 
has  spoken  his  mind  in  a  huge  volume,  he  knows 
that  there  is  much  more  to  be  said  upon  his  theme, 
and  so  he  leaves  the  way  open  without  the  slightest 
effort  to  block  it.  He  is  conscious  that  we  have  not 
reached  the  terminus  on  any  of  the  great  trunk  lines 
of  religious  inquiry.  We  are  scattered  along  at 
various  way  stations,  thankful  for  what  we  know, 
grateful  for  the  progress  made,  but  confessing  with 
the  apostle  of  old  that  we  have  not  attained,  neither 
are  we  already  made  perfect  either  in  theory  or  in 
practise.  We  are  simply  determined  to  use  the  part 
we  know  in  pressing  toward  the  mark.  This  is  the 
only  tenable  position  for  serious,  inquiring,  devoted 
natures  face  to  face  with  problems  where  unsolved 
remainders  resist  all  efforts  to  gain  exact  and  final 
knowledge. 

When  certain  theologians  were  once  declaiming  on 
behalf  of  a  hard  and  fast  system  of  belief,  and  de- 
nouncing those  who  in  any  wise  took  exception  to 
it,  one  wise  saint  exclaimed:  "Brethren,  I  beseech 

[40] 


SPIRITUAL    ENERGY    OF    A    MAN 

you  by  the  mercies  of  God,  believe  it  possible  that 
you  may  be  mistaken  and  that  you  may  learn  some- 
thing more. "  The  willingness  to  admit  the  unfinished 
character  of  our  theological  systems  and  the  necessity 
for  readjustment  and  enlargement  in  the  light  of 
further  experience,  is  never  a  sign  of  spiritual 
decadence;  it  is  rather  an  indication  of  spiritual 
energy  and  health.  Too  often  men  refuse  to  admit 
any  change  in  their  position  on  important  subjects, 
because  of  the  trouble  involved  in  learning  and 
unlearning,  in  restatement  and  readjustment;  and 
the  foolish  attempt  is  again  made  to  put  the  new  wine 
of  increased  experience  into  the  old  wine-skins  of 
finished  dogma,  with  the  inevitable  waste  and  loss. 
The  man  whose  heart  is  pure,  whose  mind  is  open, 
and  whose  face  is  toward  the  front,  is  the  man  whose 
spiritual  life  has  most  value  and  significance  for  the 
moral  progress  of  his  day. 

Finally  Job  asserted  his  confidence  in  the  moral 
order  maintained  by  the  living  God.  If  we  should 
stop  at  the  point  already  reached,  the  note  would  be 
one  of  desperation,  —  desperation  coupled  with  a 
determination  to  hold  fast  to  righteousness,  but  with 
a  melancholy  note.  It  would  say,  "If  there  is 
nothing  better  in  sight,  let  us  fear  God,  for  that  is 
wisdom,  and  depart  from  evil,  for  that  is  understand- 
ing. Even  if  the  world  is  not  ruled  by  justice  and  if 
death  ends  all,  still  we  cannot  play  our  part  better 
or  meet  death  more  courageously  than  to  do  it  with 
clean  hands  and  pure  hearts.  What  better  thing  can 
we  give  the  world  now  or  leave  as  a  heritage  to  our 
children  than  the  record  of  a  righteous  life  ?  "  All  this 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

Job  said,  —  "He  will  slay  me;  I  have  no  hope,  but  I 
will  not  put  away  mine  integrity  from  me." 

But  he  went  far  beyond  that;  he  built  up  from 
moral  considerations,  by  induction  from  admitted 
facts,  a  certain  sure  confidence.  This  book,  it  will  be 
remembered,  belongs  to  the  wisdom  literature  of  the 
Bible.  No  mention  is  made  of  the  Law  given  by 
Moses  nor  of  any  "Thus  saith  the  Lord"  of  the 
prophet.  We  have  here  simply  a  careful  expression 
of  trust  built  up  by  a  study  of  the  facts  of  experience 
as  they  open  before  men  in  general. 

Job  was  pondering  the  question  with  a  pure 
heart,  for  he  held  fast  his  integrity,  and  with  an  open 
mind,  for  the  collapse  of  the  current  theological 
theory  had  left  him  free  to  think.  With  that  spiritual 
energy  which  forbade  his  resting  content  with  any- 
thing less  than  the  utmost  effort  to  find  a  starting- 
point  for  his  convictions,  he  reasoned  his  way. 

The  world  seems  to  be  unjust,  he  said,  —  here  a 
good  man  is  suffering,  there  robbers  prosper  and 
their  tents  are  secure.  No  man  can  blind  his  eyes  to 
these  apparent  injustices.  And  the  great  cosmic 
processes  seem  to  be  morally  indifferent.  One  wiser 
than  Job  saw  that  God  makes  his  sun  to  shine 
on  the  evil  and  the  good;  He  sends  his  rain  upon 
the  just  and  upon  the  unjust.  These  words  may  be 
quoted  indeed  in  support  of  the  broad  impartiality 
of  God's  kindness,  but  they  may  also  be  quoted  as 
evidence  of  the  moral  indifference  of  the  cosmic 
forces  which  enfold  us. 

Yet  can  a  righteous  God  permanently  suffer  these 
injustices  to  remain?  For  some  inscrutable  reason 


SPIRITUAL    ENERGY    OF    A    MAN 

they  exist  now,  but  in  order  to  avoid  moral  bank- 
ruptcy and  the  utter  denial  of  his  moral  character, 
must  He  not  sometime,  somewhere,  set  all  things 
even?  Thus  the  problem  forced  itself  home  upon 
Job's  thought  —  he  might  as  a  man  accept  injustice, 
suffer  under  it  and  die  under  it,  but  could  God  accept 
it  as  final !  A  man's  own  son  might  accept  unjust 
treatment  in  his  home  and  get  through  with  it, 
crippled,  hindered,  wounded  perhaps,  but  could  the 
man  himself  stand  it?  As  a  righteous  father  could 
he  allow  permanent  injustice  to  mar  his  treatment 
of  his  son  ?  Where,  then,  we  may  ask,  is  the  moral 
sensitiveness  of  that  Holy  One  from  whom  all  father- 
hood in  heaven  and  on  earth  is  named  ? 

When  Job  reached  that  point  he  was  a  long  way 
toward  the  confidence  finally  expressed.  "My  mis- 
fortunes seem  to  impeach  me,"  he  cried,  "but  He 
that  will  vouch  for  me  is  on  high.  I  know  that  my 
Vindicator  is  alive,  and  at  the  last  He  will  stand  upon 
the  earth ! " 

Here  we  have  one  of  the  high-water  marks  in  the 
book  of  Job.  He  was  utterly  flung  back  upon  God  — 
the  property  which  would  have  occupied  his  attention 
was  gone;  the  children  who  would  have  comforted 
him  were  all  dead ;  the  wife  who  might  have  shared 
and  lightened  his  misery  had  bidden  him  curse  God 
and  die;  the  health  that  would  have  enabled  him 
to  struggle  for  another  fortune  had  given  place  to 
loathsome  disease;  his  friends  came,  not  with 
sympathy,  but  with  accusations  against  his  sincerity. 
He  was  thrown  back  upon  God  with  the  intensity  and 
the  daring  of  sore  distress,  with  the  bare  necessities 

[43] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

of  one  who  came  naked  into  the  world  and  seemed 
destined  to  depart  naked  out  of  it.  And  in  that  in- 
tense experience  he  felt  sure  that  God  could  not 
permanently  endure  such  injustice.  "I  know  that 
my  Vindicator  is  alive,  and  that  he  shall  stand  at  the 
last  upon  the  earth." 

It  is  a  splendid,  shining  confidence  which  Job  ex- 
hibits here.  The  scientists  have  taught  us  lessons 
we  never  can  forget  as  to  the  universal  fidelity  of 
physical  law,  even  in  the  smallest  details.  Nature 
wears  an  aspect  of  infinite  patience  with  things  ap- 
parently insignificant  in  the  vast  evolutionary  design. 
In  the  ongoing  of  cosmic  processes  so  great  that  they 
baffle  the  mind,  the  very  hairs  of  our  heads,  the 
pollen  of  the  flowers,  the  tints  on  the  wing  of  a  bird, 
the  fine  dust  that  blows  through  the  air,  are  all 
numbered  and  made  significant  items  in  an  unhur- 
ried plan.  There  is  universal  fidelity  down  to  the 
smallest  things.  And  if  the  Author  of  moral  life, 
the  Maker  of  a  universe,  which  taken  as  a  whole 
shows  itself  frankly  and  strongly  on  the  side  of 
righteousness,  cares  supremely  for  truth,  purity, 
justice,  and  love,  then  heaven  and  earth,  in  so  far 
as  they  are  physical  facts,  may  pass  away,  but  the 
interests  of  those  who  do  justly,  love  mercy,  and 
walk  humbly,  cannot  pass  away.  The  vindication 
of  their  lives  must  come  at  last  because  of  the  fidelity 
of  God. 

The  author  of  the  book  was  not  prepared  to  offer 
a  program.  The  need  of  an  Arbiter  or  Daysman 
who  will  put  his  hand  upon  them  both  and  act  as 
a  Mediator  between  God  and  man  was  felt,  but  ap- 


SPIRITUAL    ENERGY    OF    A    MAN 

parently  such  a  one  was  not  at  hand.  The  satis- 
faction of  going  even  to  God's  seat  with  an  array 
of  arguments  was  suggested,  but  apparently  was  not 
attainable.  The  hope  of  a  future  life,  where  all 
things  may  be  made  right,  was  named,  —  "If  a  man 
die,  shall  he  live  again?"  —  but  was  not  affirmed. 
Job  did  not  feel  clear  on  these  points,  but  in  any 
event  he  felt  that  it  was  more  important  that  a 
man  should  actually  believe  in  the  living  God, 
powerful,  wise,  beneficent,  than  that  he  should  be- 
lieve in  any  number  of  details  regarding  his  own 
personal  prospects  in  a  world  to  come.  Thus  what 
was  really  vital  and  fundamental  was  wrought  into 
Job's  experience  until  he  could  look  up  and  say,  "I 
know !  I  know  that  my  Vindicator  is  alive."  He 
affirmed  his  confidence  in  a  moral  order  which  shall 
at  last  make  all  these  puzzling  problems  plain. 

A  brave  confidence  it  was  for  that  far-off  time  and 
for  any  time.  Much  better  every  way  for  one's 
moral  health  than  those  elaborate  programs  of  the 
hereafter,  with  their  sensuous,  sentimental  pictures 
of  eternal  bliss,  stimulating  men  to  an  unreal  moral 
heroism !  Plain  living  and  high  thinking  have  their 
just  value  at  the  table  of  the  Lord.  It  is  good  to  get 
down  occasionally  to  what  is  bed-rock  for  us  as  this 
fundamental  confidence  was  bed-rock  for  Job,  and 
feel  the  strength  of  its  unyielding  support  unadorned 
by  any  more  elaborate  beliefs.  The  foundation 
of  God  standeth  sure,  having  this  seal,  The  Lord 
knoweth  them  that  are  his :  and,  he  will  inevitably 
reward  his  own,  though  he  bear  long  with  them. 
Permanent  injustice  in  a  world  manifestly  created 

[45] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

by  a  Moral  Being  and  manifestly  administered  for 
moral  ends,  becomes  impossible  to  rational  thought. 
Flung  back  upon  God  by  the  adversity  of  earthly 
life,  Job  springs  to  that  high  confidence  in  the  in- 
tegrity of  his  Maker.  There  is  a  moral  order  whose 
outcome  cannot  fail  to  make  puzzles  plain  and  to 
give  every  man  according  to  his  works. 

*'I  know  that  my  Vindicator  is  alive, 
And  at  the  last  he  shall  stand  upon  the  earth. 
He  knoweth  the  way  that  I  take, 
He  is  trying  me 
And  afterward  I  shall  come  forth  as  gold."    , 


[46] 


V.  THE  ANSWER  FROM  THE  CLOUDS 


w 


E  are  studying  a  drama  where  the  stage 
is  set  in  the  open  air.  We  have  seen 
Job  bravely  bearing  up  under  the 
shock  of  unparalleled  and  inexpli- 
cable adversity.  We  have  seen  him 
sitting  on  the  ash-heap  in  his  leprous  misery  while 
his  friends  urged  upon  him  their  mistaken  and  use- 
less theology.  We  have  seen  him  perplexed  and  com- 
pelled to  modify  his  old  beliefs,  but  possessed  of 
such  spiritual  energy  as  to  hold  fast  his  integrity. 
All  this  took  place  under  the  open  sky,  when  sud- 
denly, as  the  fierce  debate  went  on,  they  saw  a  great 
storm  gathering  in  the  west. 

The  clouds  were  massing  themselves  as  for  battle. 
The  muttering  of  distant  thunder  was  heard.  The 
wind  began  to  rise  and  the  cattle  with  sure  instinct 
came  hurriedly  to  a  place  of  shelter.  All  this  to  the 
end  that  the  author  might  introduce  another  speaker 
upon  the  scene.  Three  times  each  had  Eliphaz, 
Bildad,  and  Zophar  held  the  center  of  the  stage  with 
studied  speech;  Job  had  cursed  his  day  and  had 
made  reply  to  each  in  turn ;  Elihu,  the  younger  man, 
who  at  first  held  his  tongue  in  the  presence  of  his 
elders,  had  reviewed  the  argument  and  had  inci- 
dentally called  attention  to  the  approaching  storm. 
And  now  at  length  the  author  proceeds  to  bring 
upon  the  stage  a  more  majestic  presence  in  the 
person  of  Jehovah,  the  living  God ! 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

It  was  a  bold  thing  for  the  author  of  a  drama  to 
attempt.  To  bring  upon  the  stage  the  Almighty 
himself  and  to  introduce  his  words  into  the  dia- 
logue was  no  easy  task.  Those  simple  childish  days 
when  men  spoke  freely  of  "the  Lord  God  walking 
in  the  garden  in  the  cool  of  the  day,"  or  as  partak- 
ing of  the  hospitality  of  Abraham  at  his  tent  door, 
or  as  appearing  to  Joshua  like  a  captain  of  soldiers, 
were  gone.  A  new  sense  of  the  power,  the  dignity, 
and  the  unapproachableness  of  God  had  come.  The 
author  had  a  difficult  undertaking  upon  his  hands 
when  he  sought  to  bring  Jehovah,  whom  no  man 
hath  seen  nor  can  see,  into  the  debate.  He  showed 
himself  competent,  however;  his  instinct  of  rever- 
ence and  his  fine  taste  as  to  what  was  fitting  led 
him  to  picture  Jehovah  riding  upon  the  storm  and 
speaking  by  a  Voice  which  issued  out  of  the  whirl- 
wind. "Then  the  Lord  answered  Job  out  of  the 
whirlwind." 

It  brings  a  magnificent  picture  before  the  mind 
of  any  one  who  has  ever  seen  a  genuine  storm.  Pic- 
ture to  yourself  a  real,  live  storm,  huge  and  black, 
hiding  half  the  universe  when  he  stands  up !  He 
comes  on  like  a  giant,  twenty  miles  at  a  stride,  with 
a  rush  of  wind  that  sweeps  you  off  your  feet.  The 
glare  of  lightning,  which  dazzles  you,  is  the  angry 
flash  of  his  eye.  His  hoarse  laugh  is  heard  in  the 
crash  of  thunder.  In  his  rough  sport  he  catches  up 
the  houses  of  men  as  if  they  were  playthings,  rips 
them  in  pieces  and  flings  the  fragments  across  the 
prairie  as  he  rushes  ahead  with  a  wild  roar !  The 
sense  of  the  littleness  and  the  helplessness  of  man- 

[48] 


THE    ANSWER    FROM    THE    CLOUDS 

kind  in  the  presence  of  Him  who  holdeth  the  winds 
in  his  fists  never  dies  out  of  the  heart  of  one  who 
has  witnessed  a  cyclone.  The  fierce  tempests  of 
that  Oriental  region  where  Job  dwelt  are  sometimes 
no  less  terrible,  and  we  see  instantly  the  author's 
purpose  in  introducing  Jehovah  wrapped  in  the 
awful  garments  of  a  storm. 

Nor  is  this  all  mere  stage  play.  We  know  the 
use  that  poets  make  of  nature  when  they  picture 
her  as  somehow  acting  sympathetically  with  the 
deeds  of  men,  and  the  writers  of  Scripture  also  make 
spiritual  processes  dramatic  by  portraying  nature 
as  the  willing  instrument  of  revelation.  When 
Moses  was  receiving  the  Ten  Commandments  at  the 
top  of  Sinai,  we  read  of  thunders  and  lightnings,  and 
a  thick  cloud  upon  the  mount,  and  the  wind  blowing 
with  a  roar  which  was  like  the  sound  of  the  Lord's 
voice  in  a  trumpet.  When  Elijah  fled  before  the 
threat  of  Jezebel  to  gain  encouragement  at  the  moun- 
tain of  God  in  Horeb,  we  read  that  there  was  a  strong 
wind  which  rent  the  mountains,  an  earthquake  which 
rent  in  pieces  the  rocks,  and  after  the  earthquake 
a  fire,  the  lightning  of  the  Lord !  These  natural 
phenomena  were  the  precursors  of  "the  still  small 
voice"  in  which  Jehovah  presently  held  communica- 
tion with  his  discouraged  prophet.  In  the  literature 
of  the  Bible,  as  well  as  in  other  literature,  we  find 
this  frequent  employment  of  nature  as  an  impres- 
sive background  for  the  manifestation  of  spiritual 
truth. 

But  it  was  even  more  than  high  literary  art  to  thus 
picture  Jehovah  as  riding  upon  the  wings  of  the  wind. 

~T~  [49] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

The  author  would  have  us  hear  "the  soul  of  external 
nature"  speaking  in  terms  of  revelation.  We  are 
dealing  with  a  portion  of  the  Wisdom  Literature; 
the  Temple  is  not  here  nor  the  Law  given  by  Moses 
nor  the  spiritual  ecstasy  and  vision  of  the  Prophet. 
The  lessons  of  experience  and  the  considerations 
drawn  from  the  broad  commonplaces  of  moral  rea- 
son are  our  instructors  here;  it  is  along  these  lines 
that  the  wisdom  writers  gain  their  spiritual  meat 
from  God.  It  was  therefore  directly  in  the  pathway 
of  the  author's  main  endeavor,  to  make  the  storm 
itself,  with  all  the  other  phenomena  of  inanimate 
nature  as  well  as  the  living  creatures,  speak  out  and 
declare  the  wondrous  truth  of  God.  The  things  that 
are  made  are  summoned  to  the  great  debate  that  they 
may  declare  the  invisible  things  of  God,  even  his 
eternal  power  and  Godhead. 

"Look  unto  the  heavens,  and  see ! 
Stand  still,  and  consider  the  wondrous  works  of  God. 
Bend  your  eyes  to  the  hawk  and  the  raven, 
The  wild  ox  and  the  wild  goat ! 
Hearken  unto  this,  O  Job, 
Whatsoever  is  under  the  whole  heaven  is  mine." 

We  have  unfolded  here  a  spiritual  truth  much 
emphasized  in  modern  times.  God  is  in  his  world. 
He  did  not  create  it  and  then  put  it  out  of  his  own 
hands  into  the  care  of  impersonal  law.  In  the  begin- 
ning God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth;  and 
to  this  hour  the  heavens  declare  his  glory  as  some- 
thing resident  and  powerful  in  those  celestial  move- 

[50] 


THE    ANSWER    FROM    THE    CLOUDS 

ments;  and  out  of  the  lips  of  these  cosmic  processes 
a  voice  goes  forth  into  all  the  earth  and  its  words  to 
the  end  of  the  world. 

In  affirming  "God  in  nature"  we  need  not  forget 
nor  belittle  the  God  of  grace;  and  conversely  in 
urging  upon  the  attention  and  conscience  of  man- 
kind the  God  of  the  Bible  we  shall  be  unfaithful 
servants  if  we  forget  what  God  has  said  and  is  say- 
ing in  the  skies,  the  fields,  and  the  ocean  depths. 
The  Bible  is  the  best  expression  we  have  of  the  spirit 
of  God  in  literature.  The  Church  is  the  best  ex- 
pression of  that  spirit  in  an  institution.  The  un- 
touched processes  of  the  natural  world  about  us 
are  the  best  expression  in  material  forms.  When 
the  Master  of  spiritual  values  walked  the  earth,  the 
wheat  and  the  flowers,  the  birds  of  the  air  and  the 
fish  of  the  sea,  the  varying  responses  of  the  soil,  and 
the  work  of  the  leaven  as  it  wrought  with  the  meal, 
were  all  full  of  spiritual  suggestion.  It  is  therefore 
in  line  with  the  best  method  the  world  has  ever  seen, 
and  a  prophetic  note  of  anticipation  as  well,  when 
this  author  brings  the  voice  of  Jehovah  out  of  the 
storm  and  bids  us  hear  the  soul  of  external  nature 
interpreting  the  ways  of  God  to  men.  "Then  the 
Lord  answered  Job  out  of  the  whirlwind." 

First  of  all  the  Lord  reminded  Job  that  the  par- 
ticular mystery  of  his  personal  life  and  lot  was  only 
an  item  in  the  greater  mystery  which  enfolded  him. 
Those  opening  sentences  are  not  spoken  in  rebuff. 
Job  is  not  censured  for  questioning  the  ways  of  God 
nor  for  seeking  to  solve  the  mystery  of  undeserved 
suffering.  In  the  end  the  Lord  himself  commends 

[51] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

Job  because  he  has  spoken  "the  thing  that  is  right.'* 
The  opening  words  are  not  a  censure,  but  an  invita- 
tion to  take  a  broader  view  and  see  how  individual 
perplexity  is  only  one  item  in  a  great,  vast  scheme 
which  eludes  our  comprehension. 

"  Where  wast  thou  when  I  laid  the  foundations  of  the  earth  ? 
Declare,  if  thou  knowest  it  all ! 
Whereupon  were  the  foundations  thereof  fastened  ? " 

In  the  days  when  men  believed  that  the  earth  was 
flat  and  stationary,  resting  upon  something  which 
held  it  in  place,  this  question  of  foundation  was  a 
perpetual  puzzle.  And  now  that  we  know  that  the 
earth  is  a  globe,  moving  swiftly  through  space,  we 
are  still  in  the  presence  of  an  unsolved  mystery. 
The  leading  scientists  have  nothing  clear  or  definite 
to  say  as  to  how  the  earth  acquired  its  initial  velocity. 
We  are  as  far  from  a  solution  of  this  commonplace 
fact  that  the  earth  revolves,  as  was  Job  from  know- 
ing where  the  foundations  of  his  earth  were  fastened. 

The  Lord  invited  Job  to  look  upon  the  cluster  of 
the  Pleiades  and  the  bands  of  Orion,  to  watch  the 
signs  of  the  zodiac  in  their  stately  annual  procession, 
to  witness  the  flash  of  the  lightning  or  the  dust  run- 
ning before  the  storm,  and  thus  to  realize  that  the 
origin,  maintenance,  and  final  meaning  of  all  these 
mighty  processes  were  far  beyond  his  ken.  His  per- 
sonal problem  was  part  of  an  infinite  mystery  in  the 
presence  of  which  all  life  is  lived. 

His  attention  is  carried  on  up  into  animate  nature. 
Those  fine  adjustments  which  make  possible  all  the 

[52] 


THE    ANSWER    FROM    THE    CLOUDS 

varied  forms  of  teeming  life  that  fill  the  globe  and 
the  true  significance  of  all  these  myriad  creatures, 
how  far  beyond  the  highest  science  of  our  own  day 
is  the  perfect  understanding  of  it  all !  Children  in 
the  menagerie,  looking  upon  some  strange  animal 
from  far-off  Africa  or  from  the  depths  of  the  ocean, 
even  as  Job  looked  upon  the  leviathan  and  the  be- 
hemoth, ask:  "What  did  God  make  him  for?" 
The  ripest  learning  can  only  repeat  the  same  old 
question  and  leave  it  still  unanswered.  The  sight 
of  a  problem  vaster  every  way  than  the  measure  of 
our  ability  ought  to  induce  within  us  the  spirit  of 
modesty  and  patience.  We  ought  not  to  throw  away 
our  belief  in  God,  our  habits  of  righteous  action,  our 
trust  in  the  future,  simply  because  we  have  on  our 
hands  the  perplexing  personal  problem  of  unex- 
plained adversity.  Hearken  unto  this,  O  Job : 
Stand  still,  and  consider  the  wondrous  works  of 
God.  Wait  on  the  Lord  and  be  of  good  courage, 
until  by  the  further  declarations  of  his  meaning  and 
purpose  he  shall  strengthen  thine  heart ! 

The  voice  of  the  Lord  further  affirmed  that  there 
were  method  and  meaning  even  in  those  phenomena 
which  seemed  inexplicable.  "Who  is  this  that  dark- 
eneth  counsel  by  words  without  knowledge  ?  "  Coun- 
sel there  was,  but  men  by  their  foolish  theories  were 
hiding  it  away.  Method,  meaning,  purpose  there 
were,  though  not  as  yet  discoverable  in  their  com- 
pleteness by  the  mind  of  man.  The  earth  was  not 
swinging  loose  and  wild  through  infinite  space;  the 
foundations  thereof  were  indeed  fastened  some- 
where; the  terms  and  conditions  of  life  were  estab- 

[53] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

lished  and  ordered  by  moral  purpose.  Moral  insight 
will  recognize  this  fact,  for  when  those  conditions 
were  first  laid  down,  "the  morning  stars  sang  to- 
gether, and  all  the  sons  of  God  shouted  for  joy!" 
The  morning  stars,  the  soul  of  inanimate  nature, 
and  the  sons  of  God,  the  beings  of  moral  insight, 
sang  together  and  shouted  for  joy  over  the  recog- 
nized significance  of  those  mighty  beginnings. 

Men  are  dull  to  see  and  slow  of  heart  to  believe 
the  things  that  belong  to  their  peace.  Sometimes  it 
seems  as  if  inanimate  nature  would  impatiently  cry 
out  to  tell  us  where  our  salvation  lies.  Jesus  said 
that  if  the  simple,  childlike  natures  who  found  in 
him  their  moral  recovery  and  the  hope  of  the  world, 
should  hold  their  peace,  the  stones  would  cry  out. 
In  default  of  human  testimony,  the  voiceless  matter 
would  become  vocal  with  a  spiritual  message.  So 
this  author  calls  up  the  morning  stars,  the  springs  of 
the  deep,  the  hail  and  the  snow,  the  wild  beasts  and 
the  wild  birds,  to  bear  their  testimony  that  meaning 
and  purpose  are  the  lords  of  life ;  that  meaning  and 
purpose  unceasingly  rule,  out  in  the  immensities  of 
space,  down  to  the  very  depths  and  foundations  of 
earth,  and  on  out  to  the  frontier  of  man's  knowledge 
and  interest,  where  strange  forms  of  animal  life  like 
the  crocodile  and  hippopotamus  hold  sway.  Mean- 
ing and  purpose  are  here  affirmed,  though  as  to  what 
the  final  meaning  of  all  these  mysterious  forms  and 
processes  may  be,  the  last  word  has  not  been  and 
cannot  yet  be  spoken. 

There  is  comfort  in  all  this;  even  upon  his  ash- 
heap,  property  gone,  health  gone,  children  dead,  his 

[54] 


THE    ANSWER    FROM    THE    CLOUDS 

friends  viewing  him  with  suspicion,  and  his  confident 
belief  assailed  by  a  persistent  "Why,"  —even  there 
Job  could  yet  gird  up  his  loins  and  play  the  man. 
If  he  could  only  know  that  his  suffering  was  not 
needless  nor  meaningless,  that  down  to  the  very 
depths  of  his  struggle  there  reached  the  thought  and 
intent  of  his  Maker  bent  on  some  wise  and  good  end, 
he  could  hold  fast  his  integrity  undaunted.  The  very 
knowledge  that  such  purpose  was  there  would  sum- 
mon all  that  was  heroic  in  him  to  stand  up  and  bear 
its  part  in  that  undeclared  plan  of  God. 

The  private  soldier  may  not  know  why  he  is 
wearily  tramping  through  the  morass,  or  blindly  dig- 
ging in  the  ditch,  or  pacing  to  and  fro  in  the  dark 
and  sleet  on  some  lonely  picket-line.  But  let  him  feel 
that  there  is  a  general  who  does  know  the  meaning 
of  it  all,  and  who  is  slowly,  surely,  steadily  moving 
toward  a  certain  desired  and  attainable  end,  toward 
final  victory  over  that  which  opposes  itself  to  his 
country's  peace,  and  the  private  is  at  once  filled  with 
courage  and  zeal ;  the  weary  march,  the  labor  in  the 
ditch,  the  peril  of  the  picket-line  are  all  heroically 
borne  as  part  of  a  plan,  undeclared  as  yet,  undis- 
coverable  by  him,  but  clear  and  plain  at  head- 
quarters. 

This  is  the  attitude  of  rational  faith.  We  believe 
in  God.  We  believe  that  at  Headquarters,  Power, 
Wisdom,  Beneficence  are  to  be  found,  and  that  down 
through  the  ages  that  Infinite  Person  has  been  gain- 
ing his  ends.  The  study  of  geology  gives  us  a  story  of 
higher  and  ever  higher  orders  of  life  which  emerge  and 
displace  the  lower.  The  record  of  written  history  is  of 

[55] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

progress  where  higher  and  yet  higher  levels  in  human 
attainment  have  been  gained,  held,  and  made  the 
starting-points  for  further  advance.  And  to  eyes 
that  can  see,  there  is  in  all  this  meaning  and  purpose. 
Thus  Job  gained  a  vision  of  the  significance  of  all 
created  things,  from  the  least  to  the  greatest,  as  hold- 
ing relation  to  a  plan  too  great  as  yet  for  final  state- 
ment, but  a  true  object  of  reasonable  faith. 

"He  seemed  to  hear  a  heavenly  Friend 
And  through  thick  veils  to  apprehend 
A  labor  working  to  an  end." 

The  Voice  from  the  storm  also  affirmed  what  is 
implied  above,  the  sympathetic  interest  of  the  Lord 
as  all-inclusive:  "Whatsoever  is  under  the  whole 
heaven  is  mine."  The  Voice  from  the  clouds  did  not 
try  to  argue  out  Job's  individual  case  with  him,  and 
for  that  reason  some  writers  have  maintained  that 
the  Voice  was  not  an  answer,  but  a  rebuff.  It  ought 
to  be  remembered,  however,  that  the  author  himself 
did  not  assume  to  know  the  perfect  and  final  mean- 
ing of  all  earthly  misfortune ;  he  did  not  dare  to  put 
a  lame,  imperfect  explanation  on  the  lips  of  Jehovah 
as  a  weaker  mind  would  have  done.  So  he  leaves 
this  individual  case  without  explanation  in  his  "An- 
swer from  the  clouds,"  and  gives  Job  instead  a  wider 
vision  of  God's  sympathetic  interest  in  all  forms 
of  life. 

He  draws  a  noble  picture  of  joyous  and  beneficent 
Power,  of  the  constant  presence  of  Purpose  and  of  an 
all-conclusive  Sympathy  !  This  sympathy  extends  to 

[56] 


THE  ANSWER  FROM  THE  CLOUDS 

the  vast  things,  —  the  foundations  of  the  earth,  the 
stars  in  their  course,  the  depths  of  the  sea,  the  rain 
and  snow  and  hail !  It  extends  no  less  to  the  small 
things;  the  wild  birds  and  wild  goats,  which  seem 
at  first  to  have  no  value  for  God  or  man,  are  also 
objects  of  Divine  Interest !  The  hawk  soars  by  his 
wisdom,  the  eagle  mounts  up  at  his  command  to 
make  her  nest  on  high.  The  wild  ass  goes  out  free, 
scorning  the  tumult  of  the  city  and  making  the  moun- 
tain range  his  pasture.  The  wild  goats  bring  forth 
their  young  and  lead  them  to  the  rocks  where  they 
find  their  food.  This  sympathy  extends  as  well  to 
forms  of  life  remote  from  human  knowledge  or  inter- 
est. He  brings  in  the  monsters  of  the  Nile,  the  levi- 
athan or  crocodile,  the  behemoth  or  hippopotamus 
—  even  to  these  huge,  strange  beasts  the  sympathetic 
interest  of  God  extends.  The  author  thus  asserts  the 
joyous  sympathy  of  God  with  things  small  and  great, 
with  things  near  and  things  remote. 

Job  had  come  to  believe  that  God  was  inaccessible 
and  that  his  ways  were  past  finding  out.  He  was 
eager  to  discover  Him  and  to  come  even  to  his  seat, 
but  he  went  forward  and  he  was  not  there,  and  back- 
ward but  he  could  not  find  him.  Now  he  is  told  by 
the  Voice  that  God  is  not  inaccessible  but  everywhere 
present,  and  that  his  sympathetic  interest  is  all- 
inclusive.  It  is  the  very  argument  used  by  Jesus 
centuries  later.  "  Be  not  anxious  as  to  what  ye  shall 
eat  or  drink  or  put  on,'*  he  said.  "Live  right;  seek 
first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  these  things  shall  be 
added  unto  you,  because  your  heavenly  Father 
knoweth  that  ye  have  need  of  all  these  things.  Con- 

[57] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

sider  the  lilies  how  they  grow ;  they  are  not  anxious, 
yet  your  heavenly  Father  clothes  them.  Consider 
the  ravens ;  they  neither  sow  nor  reap  nor  gather  into 
barns,  yet  your  heavenly  Father  feeds  them.  Are 
ye  not  of  much  more  value  than  they  ?  " 

It  was  not  a  picture  of  any  special  providence  or 
miraculous  interference.  There  is  no  record  iri  the 
Bible  or  out  of  it  that  God  ever  wrought  a  miracle 
to  feed  a  bird,  yet  Christ  says,  "Your  heavenly 
Father  feedeth  them."  It  was  rather  the  testimony 
of  Jesus  to  the  presence  of  divine  purpose  and  love 
within  those  ordinary  processes  which  clothe  the 
lilies  and  feed  the  birds;  within,  not  apart  from 
them  nor  in  the  gaps  or  breaks,  but  within  the  steady 
march  of  those  great  processes  themselves,  we  are  to 
find  and  know  the  presence  of  God  !  The  power,  the 
wisdom,  and  the  beneficence  within  these  processes 
will  one  day  be  fully  declared,  making  all  puzzles 
plain  and  setting  all  things  even.  "Whatsoever  is 
under  the  whole  heaven  is  mine,"  the  Voice  said; 
we  may  therefore  trust  God  to  deal  equitably  with 
his  own. 

"Whatsoever"  —  the  untamed  and  savage  things 
like  the  wild  ass  and  wild  goat,  the  crocodile  and 
hippopotamus,  all  are  His !  And  those  wild,  rough 
things  we  call  adversities,  calamities,  unexplained 
misfortunes,  those  savage  events  which  fall  upon 
men  as  they  fell  upon  Job,  sweeping  away  property, 
health,  loved  ones,  and  inner  peace  !  —  none  of  these 
fall  to  our  lot  without  the  heavenly  Father's  notice. 
Two  sparrows  are  sold  for  a  farthing,  yet  not  one  of 
them  is  forgotten.  Up  into  his  all-inclusive  purpose 

[58] 


THE    ANSWER    FROM    THE    CLOUDS 

and  deep  into  the  heart  of  his  universal  sympathy, 
are  gathered  these  wild  experiences  sometimes  re- 
garded as  meaningless  !  Thus  when  we  truly  feel 
that  he  knows  all  and  means  something  as  the  out- 
come of  it  all,  we  can  gather  strength  to  go  on ! 

Up  in  the  clear,  storm- washed  air,  that  was  what 
Job  saw.  The  message  indicated  in  this  brief  way 
was  what  he  heard  above  the  roar  of  the  whirlwind. 
It  has  the  more  value  in  that  it  was  not  a  spiritual 
ecstasy  vouchsafed  to  some  favored  doubter,  but  what 
we  may  all  look  into  the  heavens  and  see.  We  all 
live  in  the  presence  of  the  same  natural  world  that 
spoke  to  Job.  It  was  not  the  utterance  of  any  mi- 
raculous intervention,  but  the  voice  of  a  storm  such 
as  often  swept  the  land  of  Uz. 

We  find  here  the  enduring  significance  of  the  order 
of  nature  itself  as  a  divine  voice,  and  this  has  more 
value  for  the  spiritual  Me  than  would  any  interrup- 
tion of  that  order,  however  marvelous.  If  one  man 
had  really  lived  for  three  days  inside  a  great  fish ;  if 
three  men  had  actually  walked  unscorched  in  a  fur- 
nace heated  seven  times  hotter  than  it  was  wont  to  be 
heated;  if  one  soldier  had  actually  commanded  the 
sun  to  stand  still  that  a  longer  day  might  be  had  for 
winning  victories,  —  if  all  these  startling  recitals  were 
sober  history  instead  of  being,  as  many  persons  now 
believe,  poetry  and  parable  embodying  useful  spir- 
itual truths,  still  all  these  events,  occurring  but  once 
and  not  capable  of  being  repeated  in  our  own  experi- 
ence, would  be  of  slight  significance.  They  cannot 
be  relied  upon  to-day  as  items  in  the  common  expe- 
rience of  ordinary  people.  Men  who  are  swallowed 

[59] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

by  sharks  die ;  men  who  are  cast  into  blast  furnaces 
are  burned  to  a  crisp ;  men  who  call  upon  the  sun  to 
stand  still  see  it  move  calmly  on  its  appointed  way. 
The  accounts  fail  to  furnish  us  the  highest  form  of 
help  even  if  we  should  accept  them  as  genuine  his- 
tory, because  such  marvelous  experiences  cannot  be 
repeated  in  the  lives  of  other  men  in  their  hour 
of  need. 

But  the  spiritual  testimony  of  these  cosmic  proc- 
esses to  which  Jesus  pointed  when  he  said,  "Your 
heavenly  Father  clothes  the  lilies  and  feeds  the  birds," 
has  abiding  significance  and  utility  because  it  tells 
of  that  which  is  capable  of  endless  repetition.  The 
stars  in  their  courses  fight  steadily  against  Sisera  and 
against  whatever  opposes  itself  to  the  development  of 
the  spiritual  life  of  the  race.  The  message  of  the 
wild  ass  and  the  wild  goat,  of  the  Nile  monsters  find- 
ing, through  the  sympathetic  interest  of  God,  their 
appointed  opportunity  for  fulfilling  his  purpose  and 
living  their  lives,  says  to  each  generation  what  it  said 
to  Job.  Their  line  is  gone  out  into  all  the  earth  and 
their  words  to  the  end  of  the  world,  and  there  is  no 
speech  nor  language  where  their  voice  is  not  heard. 
They  speak  everywhere  of  an  all-inclusive  power  and 
wisdom  and  goodness  bent  upon  higher  and  yet  higher 
levels  of  existence,  bent  upon  the  moral  progress 
of  mankind,  toward  the  perfect  man  after  the  stature 
of  the  fulness  of  Christ.  Study  the  meaning  of  this 
Voice  out  of  the  whirlwind,  ponder  what  it  had  to 
say,  and  you  will  learn  to  meet  and  know  God  along 
the  dusty  highway  of  common  life,  upon  the  great 
thoroughfares  where  travel  the  cosmic  processes 

[60] 


THE  ANSWER  FROM  THE  CLOUDS 

which  enfold  us  all.  It  came  to  Job  in  the  roar  of 
the  storm,  and  because  he  had  ears  to  hear,  he  heard 
the  message: 

"Look  unto  the  heavens,  and  see! 
Whatsoever  is  under  the  whole  heaven  is  mine." 


[61] 


VI.     THE    EMERGENCE   OF    A    NEW 
FAITH 


E  have  come  to  the  last  scene  in  this 
moral  drama.  The  shock  of  unex- 
plained adversity  has  been  felt;  the 
failure  of  the  easy  conventional  inter- 
pretations has  been  witnessed ;  the  sturdy 
honesty  of  a  perplexed  sufferer  holding  fast  his 
integrity,  though  compelled  to  change  his  beliefs, 
has  been  studied;  the  answer  from  the  clouds  has 
given  us  the  larger  sense  of  God's  sympathetic 
interest  in  everything  under  heaven;  and  now  we 
come  to  the  closing  scene,  which  might  be  called 
"The  Emergence  of  a  New  Faith"  corrected  and 
purified  by  hard  experience. 

The  assertion  has  been  made  that  the  author  of  Job 
raises  problems  which  he  does  not  solve.  Why  does 
God  allow  good  men  to  suffer  undeserved  misfor- 
tune ?  was  one  of  the  questions  asked.  The  current 
theology  said  that  all  suffering  was  punishment  for 
sin,  and  the  three  friends  labored  incessantly  to  main- 
tain that  proposition.  But  the  record  of  Job's  life, 
his  own  conscience,  and  the  testimony  borne  to  his 
integrity  by  the  Lord  himself,  all  contradicted  their 
contention,  and  it  broke  down.  Why,  then,  did  Job 
suffer?  The  question  is  not  fully  answered;  the 
author  in  representing  Jehovah  as  speaking  from  the 

[62] 


THE    EMERGENCE    OF    A    NEW    FAITH 

whirlwind  does  not  attempt  a  complete  reply.  He 
did  not  know,  and  he  dared  not  put  an  insufficient 
answer  on  the  lips  of  Jehovah.  He  therefore  passed 
that  question  by,  and  the  Voice  from  the  clouds 
speaks  of  other  and  more  fundamental  matters. 

In  place  of  such  a  definite  answer  to  the  one  query, 
there  came  a  fuller,  richer  vision  of  God,  which  would 
avail  more  than  many  such  detailed  replies.  In  the 
hour  of  the  storm  and  above  the  roar  of  the  wind, 
Job  hears  a  Voice  affirming  the  presence,  the  interest 
and  the  sympathy  of  God  in  and  with  all  forms  of 
life.  God's  tender  mercies  were  seen  to  be  over  all 
his  works.  The  visible  things  of  his  creation  were 
declaring  the  invisible  things  of  his  power  and  God- 
head. Whatsoever  was  under  the  whole  heaven  was 
his  and  in  the  end  he  could  be  depended  upon  to  be 
faithful  with  his  own.  In  the  presence  of  this  new 
vision  of  God,  all  Job's  past  notions  of  him  as  being 
merely  a  careful  paymaster  measuring  out  the  ap- 
propriate amount  of  prosperity  for  a  given  amount 
of  piety,  or  the  appropriate  amount  of  suffering  for 
a  given  quantity  of  sin,  seemed  mere  tradition  and 
hearsay.  Thus  he  cries  in  the  face  of  this  grander 
idea  of  God : 

"I  had  heard  of  thee  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear; 
But  now  mine  eye  seeth  thee ! " 

This  larger  vision  of  God  was  Job's  new  faith. 
The  crude  notion  that  suffering  has  no  other  place  in 
the  moral  economy  of  the  world  than  punishment 
was  gone ;  the  notion  that  piety  must  bring  immedi- 

[63] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

ate  and  constant  prosperity  or  fall  under  suspicion 
was  cast  off;  the  idea  that  absolute  correspondence 
between  character  and  circumstances  is  constantly 
and  universally  realized  was  abandoned.  Indeed  the 
question  was  raised  as  to  whether  such  a  system  could 
be  here  maintained  without  loss  to  disinterested  right- 
eousness. The  mystery  of  that  dark  passage  in  Job's 
life  still  lay  upon  the  mind  of  the  author,  as  similar 
experiences  lie  heavily  upon  some  of  our  minds.  It 
remained  a  source  of  perplexity  to  Job  himself,  but 
his  eye  now  saw  God,  not  absent,  not  indifferent,  not 
inefficient,  as  he  had  sometimes  feared,  but  vaster, 
richer,  and  with  ways  past  finding  out.  In  an  earlier 
scene  with  his  knowledge  and  insight  he  had  cried 
out,  in  spite  of  his  pain  and  perplexity,  "I  know  that 
my  Vindicator  is  alive,  and  that  He  shall  stand  up 
at  the  last  upon  the  earth,  .  .  .  and  without  my 
flesh  "  —  which  was  being  destroyed  by  the  dreadful 
disease  —  "shall  I  see  God."  Now  the  expectation 
is  accomplished,  the  revelation  has  come  in  terms 
of  personal  experience,  and  he  cries  with  joy, 

"I  had  heard  of  thee  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear; 
But  now  mine  eye  seeth  thee/1 

When  men  have  upon  their  hands  two  sets  of  facts 
which  apparently  cannot  be  adjusted,  they  often 
abandon  one  and  hold  fast  to  the  other.  The  scien- 
tific man,  feeling  sure  of  facts  which  can  be  weighed, 
measured,  analyzed,  and  knowing  the  difficulty  of 
adjusting  these  to  the  facts  of  spiritual  experience,  is 
oftentimes  tempted  to  disregard  the  latter  and  hold 

[64] 


THE    EMERGENCE    OF    A    NEW    FAITH 

fast  only  the  things  material.  Religious  men  feeling 
the  difficulty  of  adjusting  the  facts  of  prayer,  conver- 
sion, inspiration,  providence,  to  the  scientific  order, 
sometimes  abandon  the  latter  and  become  unreason- 
ing mystics.  The  true  way  is  to  abandon  none  of 
the  facts,  but  hold  fast  to  them  all,  waiting  for  that 
fuller  adjustment  and  reconciliation  which  must 
come  with  the  advance  of  knowledge  touching  things 
seen  and  unseen.  Difficulties  between  the  claims 
made  for  the  world  of  sense  and  those  made  for  the 
world  of  spiritual  experience  do  exist,  but  the  fact 
remains  that  faith  in  God,  the  habit  of  prayer,  the 
hope  of  immortality,  do  produce  nobler  types  of  char- 
acter than  those  wrought  out  by  schemes  of  life  which 
ignore  religious  sanctions  and  aids.  Men  do  not 
gather  grapes  from  thorns,  nor  figs  from  thistles ;  no 
more  do  they  gather,  widely  and  continuously,  the 
highest  types  of  moral  character  from  the  cherishing 
of  beliefs  which  are  essentially  false.  Thus  Job  did 
not  say  "I  see  all  things  made  plain,"  but  "Mine  eye 
seeth  thee "  —  and  in  that  fuller  vision  of  the  char- 
acter of  God  he  is  content  to  rest  and  hope. 

"Now  mine  eye  seeth  thee!"  His  mainstay 
throughout  was  his  abiding  faith  in  God.  Righteous- 
ness was  not  to  him  a  mere  scheme  of  enlightened 
and  far-seeing  self-interest;  fearing  God  was  not 
doing  something  for  pay.  The  sneer  of  the  Adversary 
was  met  and  answered.  The  hedge  about  Job's  life 
was  broken  down  and  through  the  gaps  the  enemies 
of  his  peace  swept  away  health  and  property,  children 
and  friends,  but  still  he  held  fast  his  integrity,  coming 
out  of  the  trial  more  firmly  on  God's  side  than  ever. 

5  [65] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

And  the  source  of  his  strength  throughout  was  his 
firm  faith  in  God  — 

"I  know  that  my  Vindicator  is  alive 
And  that  he  shall  stand  up  at  the  last  upon  the  earth : 
And  after  my  skin  hath  been  thus  destroyed, 
Yet  from  my  flesh  shall  I  see  God." 

It  is  true  to  this  hour  that  the  strength  of  any  life 
to  do,  to  bear,  to  hold  fast  its  course,  will  be  in  pro- 
portion to  the  fulness  and  clearness  of  its  vision  of 
God.  The  pure  in  heart  do  not  see  all  things  made 
plain;  they  do  not  understand  the  meaning  of  all 
phenomena,  or  the  explanation  of  all  perplexities, 
but  they  do  see  God.  They  endure  many  things 
which  they  do  not  understand  because  they  see  Him 
who  does  understand.  They  are  sorely  puzzled  to 
know  how  all  these  inexplicable  things  are  working 
together  for  good,  but  they  see  God  and  confide  in 
him.  And  so  they  become  as  little  children  in  the 
vast  house  of  their  Father,  somewhat  bewildered,  as 
children  commonly  are  by  the  mystery  of  their 
earthly  father's  larger  interests,  by  the  unexplained 
plans  of  the  mother  for  the  household,  by  the  far- 
reaching  purposes  of  both  parents  for  the  education 
of  their  own,  and  by  the  opposition  and  rebuke  which 
sometimes  confront  their  childish  desires.  But  in 
the  strength  of  this  fuller  vision  of  the  character  of 
God,  men  live  on  as  children  before  him,  and  by 
that  spirit  enter  into  his  kingdom  to  go  no  more 
out. 

The  author  gives  another  fine  touch  in  this  closing 
chapter.  "And  the  Lord  turned  the  captivity  of  Job, 

f66l 


THE    EMERGENCE    OF    A    NEW    FAITH 

when  he  prayed  for  his  friends."  Miserable  com- 
forters they  had  been:  they  had  rubbed  salt  and 
vinegar  in  his  wounds;  they  had  beaten  him  with 
the  dry  bones  of  their  dogma;  they  had  suspected 
him  of  secret  wickedness  and  had  striven  to  break 
down  his  reputation  for  integrity. 

And  on  his  side  Job  had  stoutly  contended  with 
them.  He  stood  up  and  argued  his  case.  He  poured 
scorn  upon  their  empty  theories:  "No  doubt  but  ye 
are  the  people,  and  wisdom  shall  die  with  you."  But 
after  the  storm  and  the  new  vision  of  God,  we  find  no 
more  heated  argument;  no  more  hurling  of  theo- 
logical anathemas  back  and  forth.  His  heart  went 
out  to  them  in  their  stiff,  blind,  dull  ignorance  of  the 
finer  things  of  faith  with  a  feeling  of  compassion, 
until  he  finally  knelt  down  and  prayed  for  them. 
"And  the  Lord  turned  the  captivity  of  Job,  when  he 
prayed  for  his  friends." 

He  argued  the  case  with  them,  for  he  was  right  and 
they  were  wrong.  He  denounced  their  theology,  for 
it  was  erroneous  and  cruel;  it  ought  to  have  been 
denounced.  He  resolutely  maintained  that  a  human 
being  has  rights  which  the  Creator  is  bound  to 
respect,  and  this  is  soundly  true  or  else  all  moral 
companionship  between  man  and  his  Maker  would 
be  at  an  end.  But  the  argument  accomplished 
little ;  it  was  when  he  prayed  for  them  that  the  bless- 
ing came.  In  the  moment  of  surrender  and  entreaty, 
in  the  act  of  outgoing  compassion,  the  blessing  came 
upon  this  weary,  suffering  heart. 

There  is  a  lesson  wrapped  up  here  for  all  those 
who  fight  the  theological  and  philosophical  battles  of 

[67] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

the  world.  Though  I  speak  with  the  tongues  of  men 
and  of  angels,  though  I  understand  all  mysteries 
and  all  knowledge,  though  I  have  faith  sufficient  to 
move  mountains  and  resolution  enough  to  stand 
firm  as  a  martyr,  I  am  as  sounding  brass  or  a  tinkling 
cymbal,  if  I  have  not  love.  When  all  the  arguments 
were  over  and  all  the  theological  knowledge  had  been 
displayed,  Job's  heart,  melted  by  the  new  vision  of 
God's  own  sympathetic  interest  in  animate  and  in 
inanimate  nature,  went  out  to  those  harsh  theologians 
in  love.  "And  the  Lord  turned  the  captivity  of  Job, 
when  he  prayed  for  his  friends." 

Argument  has  divided  families,  broken  up  friend- 
ships, warmed  the  hearts  of  men  with  anger  rather 
than  with  affection,  deepened  misunderstandings. 
It  has  closed  doors  that  were  beginning  to  stand  ajar 
to  better  things;  it  has  created  partizans  grieving 
the  Holy  Spirit  who  is  without  prejudice;  it  has 
firmly  established  contestants  in  the  conceit  of  their 
own  ignorance,  —  all  this  argument  has  done.  It  is 
therefore  true  to  the  moral  history  of  mankind  that, 
not  in  the  heat  of  argument,  but  in  the  quiet  moments 
that  follow  the  fuller  vision  of  God,  in  the  attitude 
and  act  of  prayer,  the  restoration  of  Job  took  place. 

But  in  a  drama  there  should  be  some  further 
denouement.  The  author  cannot  as  an  artist  leave 
his  work  at  loose  ends.  In  actual  life  it  often  seems 
as  if  there  were  no  outcome,  no  fit  conclusion; 
things  do  not  all  come  out  right  in  the  last  chapter. 
But  this  is  because  we  have  not  yet  read  the  last 
chapter.  In  the  drama,  however,  the  author  must  say 
what  he  has  to  say  before  he  lays  down  his  pen. 

[68] 


THE    EMERGENCE    OF    A    NEW    FAITH 

Therefore,  contrary  to  the  view  of  those  critics  who 
maintain  that  the  last  chapter  of  the  book  of  Job  is 
an  addition  by  a  later  hand,  I  contend  that  it  belongs 
with  the  rest.  The  author  who  could  write  such 
chapters  as  make  up  the  body  of  the  book  is  too 
great  an  artist  not  to  bring  his  work  to  some  kind  of 
conclusion. 

The  reward  of  Job  was  threefold:  first,  in  the 
gracious  and  cordial  recognition  of  his  fidelity  by 
Jehovah.  How  the  author  loves  to  put  upon  the  lips 
of  the  Lord  over  and  over  again,  that  affectionate 
designation,  "  my  servant  Job  "  !  "The  Lord  said 
to  Eliphaz,  My  wrath  is  kindled  against  thee,  and 
against  thy  two  friends :  for  ye  have  not  spoken  of 
me  the  thing  that  is  right,  as  'my  servant  Job '  hath." 
"Therefore,  take  unto  you  seven  bullocks  and  seven 
rams,  and  go  to  *  my  servant  Job, '  and  offer  up  for 
yourselves  a  burnt  offering."  "'My  servant  Job* 
shall  pray  for  you ;  for  him  will  I  accept,  that  I  deal 
not  with  you  after  your  folly;  for,"  he  repeats,  "ye 
have  not  spoken  of  me  the  thing  that  is  right,  as 
'my  servant  Job'  hath." 

Over  and  over  this  loving  designation  —  "  My 
servant  Job !"  It  looks  back  to  the  prologue  where 
the  Lord  flung  down  a  challenge  to  the  Adversary, 
"Hast  thou  considered  'my  servant  Job/  that  there 
is  none  like  him  in  the  earth,  a  sound,  straight, 
God-fearing,  evil-hating  man  ?  "  And  through  all 
this  troubled  experience  the  author  has  made  good 
the  Lord's  challenge.  Job  has  indeed  been  the 
servant  of  the  Most  High,  serving  him  not  for  pay, 
but  because  such  service  is  right,  because  there  is 

[69] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

nothing  higher  open  to  man  than  the  reasonable 
service  of  God. 

The  author  must  bring  out  Job's  vindication  in  the 
sight  of  his  friends  who  had  accused  him  of  secret 
sin  and  had  taunted  him  as  one  who  had  fallen  under 
the  displeasure  of  heaven.  The  reward  therefore 
could  not  be  postponed  without  doing  violence  to  the 
demands  of  the  drama.  It  is  fitting,  then,  that  in  the 
presence  of  these  very  men  the  Lord  should  speak 
over  and  over  of ."  my  servant  Job,"  and  should  make 
their  own  well-being  depend  on  his  intercession  in 
their  behalf. 

The  reward  of  Job's  fidelity  came  also  in  restored 
temporal  prosperity,  —  "The  Lord  blessed  the  latter 
end  of  Job  more  than  his  beginning."  His  health 
was  restored  and  he  lived  on  serenely  to  a  ripe  old  age. 
His  prosperity  was  regained,  and  we  find  him  with 
exactly  twice  as  many  sheep,  oxen,  and  camels  as 
before.  He  reared  another  family  of  ten  children,  and 
as  before  seven  of  them  were  sons,  to  the  delight  of 
his  Oriental  heart,  and  no  daughters  in  all  the  land 
were  so  handsome  as  the  daughters  of  Job.  In  this 
serene  and  satisfying  prosperity  he  lived  until  death 
found  him  "old  and  full  of  days." 

It  need  not  have  been  so  and  it  is  not  always  so  in 
real  life.  He  might  have  died  covered  with  leprosy, 
poor,  childless,  forlorn,  even  though  he  had  main- 
tained his  integrity  and  had  enjoyed  a  nobler  vision 
of  God.  Good  men,  with  their  heroic  faith  corrected 
and  purified  by  fiery  trials  nobly  borne,  do  die  with- 
out their  temporal  prosperity  restored.  To  us  there 
is  not  the  shock  in  such  an  unfinished  picture  that 

[70] 


THE    EMERGENCE    OP    A    NEW    FAITH 

there  would  have  been  to  the  minds  of  those  early 
men.  Jesus  Christ  has  brought  the  future  world 
upon  the  map  for  us  and  made  it  a  fact  present  to  the 
consciousness  of  most  God-fearing  people  as  it  was 
not  to  those  men  of  old.  In  the  presence  of  manifest 
injustice  at  the  end  of  an  earthly  career,  we  instinc- 
tively turn  to  the  world  beyond  in  our  thought.  But 
to  this  writer  in  that  far-off  time  the  future  life  was  not 
a  familiar  idea;  it  was  suggested,  but  not  affirmed. 
It  is  not  named  by  "the  Voice  from  the  whirlwind," 
for  the  author  dared  not  claim  the  divine  sanction  for 
his  uncertain  hope.  The  future  life  lying  then  in  a 
haze  of  uncertainty,  the  reward  of  Job  must  be 
accomplished  here,  where  all  might  see  and  where 
the  author's  steps  are  sure. 

More  than  that  the  author  would  bear  testimony 
to  the  principle  that  righteousness  does  tend  toward 
temporal  well-being.  The  three  friends  were  mis- 
taken in  pressing  it  as  such  a  hard  and  fast  rule  as  to 
admit  of  no  exception.  The  Psalmist  had  been 
young  and  now  was  old  and  he  had  never  seen  the 
righteous  forsaken  nor  his  seed  begging  bread.  His 
experience  in  the  main  is  the  experience  of  all  men, 
but  emergencies  and  disasters  suspend  the  operation 
of  this  general  rule.  The  tendency  of  all  these  proc- 
esses appointed  by  a  Moral  Being  for  moral  ends  is 
to  bring  correspondence  between  circumstances  and 
character.  We  only  go  astray  when  we  press  it  in 
every  instance  and  conclude  that  those  on  whom  the 
Tower  of  Siloam  fell  because  of  bad  masonry  were 
sinners  above  all  men  in  Jerusalem,  or  that  the  man 
was  born  blind  for  the  sin  of  his  parents,  or  that  all 

[71] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

who  suffer  conspicuous  misfortune,  as  did  Job,  must 
have  been  extraordinary  sinners.  The  author,  having 
made  room  for  the  exception  and  for  a  function  of 
suffering  which  is  not  penal,  now  tells  us  that  "the 
Lord  blessed  the  latter  end  of  Job  more  than  his 
beginning,"  in  order  to  indicate  his  confidence  that 
the  trend  and  tendency  of  righteousness  is  toward 
well-being  in  all  its  completeness.  The  kingdom  of 
righteousness,  sought  in  and  for  itself,  will  surely, 
sometime,  somewhere,  have  all  good  things  added  in 
with  it. 

The  reward  came  also  in  spiritual  enrichment. 
"The  Lord  gave  Job  twice  as  much  as  he  had  before  " 
—  sheep,  oxen,  camels  —  and  twice  as  much  also  of 
something  higher  and  more  permanent.  We  find 
more  character,  more  sympathy  for  men  mistaken  in 
their  views,  more  spiritual  insight,  —  in  a  word,  more 
Job  !  He  is  twice  the  man  he  was  !  He  was  a  sincere, 
straightforward,  useful  man,  having  heard  of  the 
deeper,  finer  things  of  spiritual  life  by  the  hearing  of 
the  ear,  but  now  as  he  emerges  from  his  hard  ex- 
periences, his  eye  has  seen  them  all  and  he  knows 
the  deep  things  of  life  by  personal  participation  in 
them.  He  stands  up  with  twice  the  spiritual  efficiency 
for  instructing  the  world's  ignorance,  for  comforting 
its  sorrows,  for  interceding  on  its  behalf  at  the  throne 
of  grace. 

Here  we  have  the  last  great  lesson  of  the  book.  It 
is  a  drama  rather  than  a  lyric  poem.  It  is  made  up  of 
action.  Inasmuch  as  it  is  a  Hebrew  drama,  the  scene 
of  action  is  the  human  soul,  and  the  materials  are 
taken  from  those  inner  values  to  which  the  Hebrews, 

[72] 


THE    EMERGENCE    OF    A    NEW    FAITH 

as  a  people  chosen  for  their  spiritual  insight,  have 
given  such  conspicuous  attention.  We  not  only  hear 
questions  discussed,  we  see  them  lived  out.  And  the 
work  of  spiritual  enlargement  and  enrichment  in  the 
principal  figure  of  the  drama  really  holds  the  center 
of  the  stage  throughout ;  the  greatest  reward  which 
Job  won  by  his  fidelity  was  in  the  fact  that  the  Lord 
gave  him  twice  as  much  of  that  deeper  life  which  is 
eternal. 

The  problems  connected  with  God's  providential 
government  of  the  world  are  not  all  solved.  The 
questions  as  to  why  the  wicked  live  and  why  the  good 
suffer  are  not  all  answered.  The  complete  returns 
which  will  enable  us  to  give  final  answer  to  these 
inquiries  are  not  yet  in  our  hands.  But  those  two 
greater  questions  referred  to  in  the  second  chapter 
are  answered.  Can  men  trust  God?  They  surely 
can,  for  his  sympathetic  interest  includes  the  very 
foundations  of  the  earth,  the  stars  in  their  courses, 
the  depths  of  the  sea ;  it  extends  to  all  the  frontiers  of 
human  knowledge  and  embraces  all  forms  of  animal 
life.  Whatsoever  is  under  the  whole  heaven  is  his, 
nothing  forgotten,  nothing  unnoticed,  nothing  un- 
utilized; and  because  all  is  his,  he  can  be  trusted 
to  deal  faithfully  and  lovingly  with  his  own. 

Can  God  trust  men?  Job  answered  this  query; 
he  made  it  plain  that  he  was  not  serving  God  for  pay, 
—  he  was  serving  him  because  God  alone  is  worthy 
of  supreme  and  complete  allegiance.  Whatever  may 
be  his  lot,  he  will  steadfastly  serve  God.  Job  knows 
how  to  abound  and  how  to  be  abased ;  he  will  in 
either  case  hold  fast  his  integrity  and  serve  God. 

[73] 


THE    STRANGE    WAYS    OF    GOD 

He  is  not  thrown  down,  he  is  not  turned  aside,  he  is 
not  beaten  back  by  the  sorest  trial.  He  knows 
throughout  that  his  Vindicator  is  alive,  and  that  at 
the  last  he  will  be  enabled  to  cry  from  a  deeper  ex- 
perience, "Mine  eye  seeth  thee."  All  that  went 
before  was  the  hearing  of  the  ear,  but  now  there  is 
the  open  vision  which  enriches  the  heart  of  this  tried 
and  troubled  servant  of  the  Most  High. 

"He  knoweth  the  way  that  I  take; 
When  he  hath  tried  me, 
I  shall  come  forth  as  gold." 


•vi*£ 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY   ) 

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